Pierluigi Paganini March 01, 2021

ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, agreed to pay $92 million in a settlement to U.S. users for illegal data collection.

ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, agreed to pay $92 million in a settlement to U.S. users. The settlement has yet to be approved by a federal judge. The Chinese firm was accused to have failed to get the users’ consent to collect data in compliance with the Illinois biometric privacy law.

Illinois is the only state that establishes penalties for any violation of data collection rules, it allows class actions against those companies that violate the law. Illinois, Texas, and Washington, are the only US state with specific laws that discipline the use of biometric data, but only the former doesn’t permit individual lawsuits.

“While we disagree with the assertions, rather than go through lengthy litigation, we’d like to focus our efforts on building a safe and joyful experience for the TikTok community,” reads an email statement issued by TikTok.

In February 2020, Facebook agreed to settle for $550 million under the same law.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, privacy)

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