TikTok has been fined €530m (£452m) because it was illegally sending user data to China, Ireland’s privacy watchdog said on Friday.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission found the social media app’s data transfers to China broke strict data privacy rules in the EU.
It also fined the company for not being transparent with users about how their data was being processed.
TikTok has been ordered to comply with the rules within six months.
The Data Protection Commission is TikTok’s powerful lead regulator in the EU because TikTok’s European headquarters are based in Dublin.
“TikTok failed to verify, guarantee and demonstrate that the personal data 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 said in a statement.
TikTok plans to lodge an appeal and said the decision focused on a “select period” that ended in May 2023 and “does not reflect the safeguards now in place”.
It specifically referred to a data localisation enterprise called Project Clover which saw three new data centres built in Europe.
“The facts are that Project Clover has some of the most stringent data protections anywhere in the industry, including unprecedented independent oversight by NCC Group, a leading European cybersecurity firm,” said Christine Grahn, TikTok’s European head of public policy and government relations.
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