Irish privacy watchdog hits TikTok with 530 million euro fine in China data transfer investigation

LONDON AP European Union privacy watchdogs fined TikTok million euros million on Friday after a four-year inspection unveiled that the video sharing app s input transfers to China breached strict details privacy rules in the EU Ireland s Material Protection Commission also sanctioned TikTok for not being transparent with users about where their personal figures was being sent and it ordered the company to comply with the rules within six months The Irish national watchdog serves as TikTok s lead details privacy regulator in the -nation EU because the company s European headquarters is based in Dublin TikTok failed to verify guarantee and demonstrate that the personal information of European users remotely accessed by staff in China was afforded a level of protection essentially equivalent to that guaranteed within the EU Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle explained in a message TikTok stated it disagreed with the decision and plans to appeal The company mentioned in a blog post that the decision focuses on a select period ending in May before it embarked on a input localization project called Project Clover that involved building three figures centers in Europe The facts are that Project Clover has specific of the bulk stringent figures protections anywhere in the industry including unprecedented independent oversight by NCC Group a leading European cybersecurity firm commented Christine Grahn TikTok s European head of society strategy and regime relations The decision fails to fully consider these considerable details measure measures TikTok whose parent company ByteDance is based in China has been under scrutiny in Europe over how it handles personal information of its users amid concerns from Western representatives that it poses a safety menace over user input sent to China In the Irish watchdog also fined the company hundreds of millions of euros in a separate child privacy probe The Irish watchdog disclosed its inspection unveiled that TikTok failed to address possible access by Chinese officers to European users personal details under Chinese laws on anti-terrorism counter-espionage cybersecurity and national intelligence that were identified as materially diverging from EU standards Grahn commented TikTok has has never received a request for European user material from the Chinese government and has never provided European user records to them Under the EU rules known as the General Facts Protection Regulation European user content can only be transferred outside of the bloc if there are safeguards in place to ensure the same level of protection Grahn stated TikTok strongly disagreed with the Irish regulator s argument that it didn t carry out necessary assessments for facts transfers saying it sought advice from law firms and experts She revealed TikTok was being singled out even though it uses the same legal mechanisms that thousands of other companies in Europe does and its approach is in line with EU rules The assessment which opened in September also uncovered that TikTok s privacy protocol at the time did not name third countries including China where user input was transferred The watchdog declared the program which has since been updated failed to explain that records processing involved remote access to personal input stored in Singapore and the United States by personnel based in China TikTok faces further scrutiny from the Irish regulator which stated that the company had provided inaccurate information to throughout the inquiry by saying that it didn t store European user content on Chinese servers It wasn t until April that it informed the regulator that it discovered in February that particular information had in fact been stored on Chinese servers Doyle commented that the watchdog is taking the new developments very seriously and considering what further regulatory action may be warranted