MOSCOW, August 2 The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against social network TikTok on suspicion of illegally collecting data from minor users of the application, follows from a statement of claim, the text of which is published by the New York Times.
“On Friday, the Ministry of Justice filed a lawsuit against (social network — ed.) TikTok on charges of illegally collecting personal data from children,” the publication said.
According to the Ministry of Justice, TikTok violated the law by collecting data from users under the age of 13 without the permission of their parents, and often refusing parents' requests to remove their child's account or content from the application. The ministry is asking to fine both TikTok and the Chinese company ByteDance, which owns it, for violating the law.
The publication, citing a representative of TikTok, writes that the management of the social network rejected the accusations, saying that many of the cited cases of violations were “factually inaccurate” or had already been addressed by the company.
TikTok is an application for creating and viewing short videos, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It was released in 2018. Even during the Donald Trump administration, US authorities expressed concern about the growing popularity of the TikTok social network in the US. They explain their fears by the fact that the personal data of American users is at the disposal of the PRC authorities. The company has repeatedly strongly denied such accusations, stating the protection of user data and the fact that all data of American customers is stored on servers located in the United States.