Eire’s Knowledge Safety Fee (DPC) on Friday fined in style video-sharing platform TikTok €530 million ($601 million) for infringing information safety laws within the area by transferring European customers’ information to China.
“TikTok infringed the GDPR concerning its transfers of EEA [European Economic Area] Person Knowledge to China and its transparency necessities,” the DPC mentioned in a press release. “The choice contains administrative fines totaling €530 million and an order requiring TikTok to convey its processing into compliance inside 6 months.”
The order, as well as, requires the corporate to droop information transfers to China inside the time interval.
The penalty is the results of an investigation that was launched in September 2021 that probed the corporate’s switch of private information to China and its compliance with stringent information safety legal guidelines concerning information transfers to 3rd international locations.
Commenting on the choice, DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle mentioned TikTok’s private information transfers to China went towards Article 46(1) of the Common Knowledge Safety Regulation (GDPR) as a result of it did not confirm and assure that the private information of EEA customers was given equal privateness protections to that afforded inside the bloc.
Doyle additional added that TikTok didn’t tackle issues arising from potential entry by Chinese language authorities beneath anti-terrorism and counter-espionage legal guidelines within the nation and which “materially” diverged from European Union requirements.
The DPC additionally faulted TikTok for offering inaccurate data throughout the inquiry to the impact that it didn’t retailer EEA customers’ information in Chinese language servers, solely to open up to the watchdog final month that it recognized a problem in its programs in February 2025, on account of which restricted EEA information had certainly been saved on servers in China.
“While TikTok has knowledgeable the DPC that the information has now been deleted, we’re contemplating what additional regulatory motion could also be warranted, in session with our peer EU Knowledge Safety Authorities,” Doyle mentioned.
Christine Grahn, TikTok’s head of public coverage and authorities relations for Europe, mentioned the choice did not consider Challenge Clover, an information safety initiative geared toward defending European person information, and that the ruling doesn’t mirror the present safeguards put in place.
“The DPC itself recorded in its report what TikTok has persistently mentioned: it has by no means acquired a request for European person information from the Chinese language authorities, and has by no means supplied European person information to them,” Grahn mentioned.
That is the second wonderful levied by the DPC towards the ByteDance-owned firm. In September 2023, TikTok was handed a €345 million (then about $368 million) wonderful for violating GDPR legal guidelines in relation to its dealing with of youngsters’s information.