Last year, TikTok agreed to make major changes to settle charges that one of its predecessor companies, Musical.ly, had violated the federal children’s online privacy law. <br /> <br />--bl-- <br /> <br />The alleged violations included collecting names, email addresses, videos and other personal information from users under the age of 13 without a parent’s consent. <br /> <br />--bl-- <br /> <br />As part of the settlement, the video-sharing app agreed to obtain a parent’s permission before collecting their child’s personal information. <br /> <br />--bl-- <br /> <br />It also agreed to delete personal information, including videos, of any children identified as younger than 13 and to remove videos and other personal details of users whose ages were unknown. <br /> <br />--bl-- <br /> <br />Among other things, the complaint identified a number of videos posted by children under 13 in 2016 that TikTok had not deleted and that remain on the app. <br /> <br />--bl-- <br /> <br />The groups also identified problems with age verification for younger users. <br /> <br />Last year, the app set up a service for children under 13, TikTok for Younger Users, which prevents them from posting videos and does not collect their personal data. <br /> <br />The app was downloaded about 11 million times by new users in the United States in March, nearly twice the total in December, according to Sensor Tower, a company that tracks app usage data. <br /> <br />--bl-- <br /> <br />Members of Congress have raised national security concerns about TikTok’s growing influence and about the risk that the app may share user data with its parent company, ByteDance, a Chinese conglomerate. <br /> <br />--bl-- <br /> <br />ByteDance bought Musical.ly for $1 billion in 2017 and merged it with TikTok, an app it already owned.
