"The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has issued a £12,700,000 fine to TikTok Information Technologies UK Limited and TikTok Inc (TikTok) for a number of breaches of data protection law ... The ICO estimates that TikTok allowed up to 1.4 million UK children under 13 to use its platform in 2020, despite its own rules not allowing children that age to create an account," the statement said.

UK data protection law obliges organizations using personal data of children under 13 to get the consent of their parents or other legal representatives, the statement read.

However, TikTok failed to do that and did not conduct the necessary checks in order to identify underage users and remove them from the platform, where they might be exposed to inappropriate content, the ICO added.

As a result, the platform collected and processed the children's personal data, which made it possible to deliver potentially harmful content to them.

The situation is not the first high-profile controversy featuring the Chinese video hosting service in recent times. Over the past months, more than half of US states, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the Council of the European Union have prohibited TikTok access from government devices due to security concerns about user data being accessed by the Chinese government.

In addition, the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs has approved a bill that could allow the US government to ban TikTok or any other foreign app if they are believed to be a threat to national security.

In its turn, in February, China criticized the idea of prohibiting the app, saying that the ban imposed by the US government was an act of misusing the concept of national security and abusing state power in order to suppress a foreign company.

In the beginning of March, Beijing said that the EU bans undermined faith in the European market.

(With UNI inputs)