Probe into TikTok over potential violation of personal data law

SEOUL — South Korea’s media regulator is set to look into social media platform TikTok over a potential violation of the nation’s personal data protection law, an official at the regulator said on Monday.

TikTok is accused of automatically requiring its users to receive advertisements, instead of letting users give their consent to receive such content under the Korean law, reports Yonhap news agency, citing industry sources.

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) suspects that TikTok may be violating the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilisation and Data Protection and will soon launch a probe into the video sharing platform, the KCC official said.

“We believe there is a problem with TikTok’s terms of service and application in getting clear informed consent from its users,” the official said.

TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is also suspected of not sharing the full content of its terms of service and privacy policy with its users when they join the platform.

Under related law, platform companies must allow freedom to users to decide whether they will receive marketing or advertisement content and get “clear” consent from users in advance to send out such content.

Those who violate the law can be subject to a fine of up to 30 million won ($22,279).

 “Under the rapid-progress scenario, in which countries experience fast but plausible mortality reductions from 2019 to 2050, we would expect globally the gap between projected and frontier life expectancy to be halved by 2050, and the economic value after achieving this scenario is equivalent to 14% of annual income,” the authors noted.

Last month, the Nepal Telecommunications Authority directed the country’s internet and mobile service providers to lift the ban on TikTok, in line with a cabinet decision on the short-video app. On August 22, Nepal’s cabinet decided to lift the ban on TikTok, which was imposed in November last year.