OTTAWA (Reuters) -TikTok has agreed to improve its measures to keep children off its website and app after a Canadian investigation found its steps to block children and protect personal information were inadequate, Canadian privacy officials said on Tuesday.
The joint investigation into TikTok by Canada’s privacy commissioner Philippe Dufresne and privacy protection authorities in the provinces of Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta found that hundreds of thousands of Canadian children accessed TikTok each year despite the company stating its platform is not intended for people under the age of 13.
The investigation also found that TikTok had been collecting and using their personal information.
“TikTok collects vast amounts of personal information about its users, including children. This data is being used to target the content and ads that users see, which can have harmful impacts, particularly on youth,” Dufresne said at a press conference announcing the investigation’s results.
TikTok has agreed to enhance age-assurance methods to keep underage users off TikTok and to improve its communications so that users, particularly younger ones, understand how their data could be used, Dufresne said.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Canada joins governments and regulators from around the world that have been scrutinizing TikTok because of concerns China could use the app to harvest users’ data or advance its interests. TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd.
The European Union’s two biggest policy-making institutions have banned TikTok from staff phones, while the U.S. Senate in December passed a bill to bar federal employees from using the app on government-owned devices.
(Reporting by Ryan Patrick Jones and Maria Cheng; Writing by Susan Heavey;Editing by Alison Williams)
