EU Hits TikTok With $600M Fine Over China Data Transfers

TikTok has been handed a $600 million (530 million euros) fine by European regulators after a four-year investigation found the app’s data transfers to China put users at risk of spying, in violation of EU data privacy rules.

The inquiry was handled by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, where TikTok has its European. TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, plans to appeal.

This does not mean the EU has found TikTok complicit in state-sponsored spying, content manipulation, or espionage; it merely means that it broke the EU’s relatively strict cross-country data privacy regulations.

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), transfers of EU citizens’ personal data outside the EU—and to several other developed countries like the US, UK, Japan, and Israel—are beholden to strict oversight.

“TikTok’s personal data transfers to China infringed the GDPR because TikTok failed to verify, guarantee and demonstrate that the personal data of EEA users, remotely accessed by staff in China, was afforded a level of protection essentially equivalent to that guaranteed within the EU,” said DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle.

“As a result of TikTok’s failure to undertake the necessary assessments, TikTok did not address potential access by Chinese authorities to European Economic Area (EEA) personal data under Chinese anti-terrorism, counter-espionage and other laws identified by TikTok as materially diverging from EU standards.”

In the US, TikTok faces a late June ban if it doesn’t sell off its US operations, largely because of US concerns that TikTok will give US data to the Chinese.

About Will McCurdy

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I’m a reporter covering weekend news. Before joining PCMag in 2024, I picked up bylines in BBC News, The Guardian, The Times of London, The Daily Beast, Vice, Slate, Fast Company, The Evening Standard, The i, TechRadar, and Decrypt Media.

I’ve been a PC gamer since you had to install games from multiple CD-ROMs by hand. As a reporter, I’m passionate about the intersection of tech and human lives. I’ve covered everything from crypto scandals to the art world, as well as conspiracy theories, UK politics, and Russia and foreign affairs.

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