TikTok owner ByteDance is set to be hit by a privacy fine of more than €500 million for illegally shipping European users’ data to China, adding to the growing global backlash over the video-sharing app.
Ireland’s data protection commission, the company’s main regulator in Europe, will issue the penalty against TikTok before the end of the month, according to people familiar with the matter.
The move comes after a lengthy investigation found the Chinese business fell foul of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation in sending the information to China to be accessed by engineers, added the people, who spoke under condition of anonymity.
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As part of the decision from Ireland’s data protection commission, the regulator will order TikTok to suspend the unlawful data processing in China within a set time frame. China has long provoked the ire of privacy activists, who claim that the nation’s mass surveillance regime violates fundamental rights.
TikTok has been in the crosshairs of the Irish data protection commission before. In September 2023, it was fined €345 million for alleged lapses in the way it cares for children’s personal data. The watchdog has also sounded the alarm over Big Tech firms shipping the personal data of European citizens outside of the 27-member bloc, slapping a record €1.2 billion fine against Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc. for failing to protect personal information from the American security services.
The Irish probe into TikTok started in 2021, when the regulator’s then head Helen Dixon claimed that EU user data could be accessed by “maintenance and AI engineers in China.”
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