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Federal Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne said TikTok must
do more to keep underage children off its platform and must
better explain its data collection practices, especially to
youth. The company has said the platform is not intended for
people under the age of 13.
“Our investigation found that measures that TikTok uses to keep
children off the popular video sharing platform and to prevent
the collection and use of their sensitive personal information
... were inadequate," Dufresne said.
Dufresne said TikTok has agreed to enhance underage assurance
methods to keep underage users off the platform and agreed to
strengthen privacy communications so that users understand how
their data is being used.
“There’s some steps that they still have to take. … For the
moment, we find it’s conditionally resolved,” he said. “We are
going to be monitoring the situation."
Dufresne said the privacy policies lack details and are hard to
find.
The federal, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia privacy
commissioners released the results of their joint investigation,
which they launched in 2023.
The investigation noted that in Quebec 40% of young people aged
6 to 17 have a TikTok account. It said among 6- to 12-year-olds,
the proportion is 17%.
“We were certainly struck by how elaborate a profiling that was
being used by TikTok,” British Columbia Privacy Commissioner
Michael Harvey said. “What information was being collected with
these facial and voice analytics and how they were always being
used in combination with things like your location, information
to create elaborate inferences about users, like what their
spending power was and to use that, to then to decide what
content, including advertising to feed back to them.”
Last year, the Canadian government said it won’t block access to
the popular video-sharing app but ordered the dissolution of its
Canadian business after a national security review of the
Chinese company behind it.
U.S. President Donald Trump said prominent billionaires —
including media mogul Rupert Murdoch and tech founder Michael
Dell — could be part of a deal in which the U.S. will take
control of the social video platform.
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