The UK’s data protection authority has revealed a “significant investigation” into the child safety protocols of three well-known applications: TikTok, Reddit, and Imgur.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) mentioned its previous successes in instigating child safety improvements on platforms such as X, Sendit, BeReal, Daily Motion, and Viber.
The ICO is examining the effectiveness of age verification systems and whether these platforms violate laws concerning the handling of minors’ personal data.
Today, we are launching three inquiries into how TikTok, Reddit, and Imgur safeguard the privacy of child users in the UK.
Our inquiry regarding TikTok focuses on how the service utilizes the personal data of users aged 13 to 17 in the UK for content recommendations and feed suggestions.
Our assessments of Imgur and Reddit will investigate how these services manage the personal data of UK children and implement age assurance measures. Such measures are crucial for ensuring the safety of children and their data online, offering tools to estimate or verify age, which helps in customizing service access and safeguarding their information.
Last year, the organization mandated several platforms to enhance protections for users under 18 years old.
- X has ceased displaying advertisements to users under 18, eliminated the option for them to enable geolocation sharing, enhanced transparency resources for young users, and established a special support center for minors and their parents.
- Sendit has stopped including geolocation data in the profiles of children, while BeReal has restricted children from sharing their exact locations online, contributing to better physical safety for kids.
- Dailymotion has introduced new privacy measures aimed at discouraging children from disclosing personal information.
- Viber has pledged to disable personalized advertising for children, ensuring that the advertising experience for minors is not influenced by their behavior or profiles.
In addition to mirroring similar privacy protections found in the EU, UK regulations compel apps and online services to limit the collection of personal data from minors and apply heightened privacy safeguards when processing such information.
BBC News shared brief comments from TikTok and Reddit, while Imgur had not provided a response at the time of this report.
TikTok informed the BBC that its recommendation systems function under “stringent and comprehensive measures designed to protect the privacy and safety of teenagers.”
A spokesperson from Reddit stated that while 95% of their audience consists of adults, they “are preparing to implement updates this year to meet new UK regulations concerning age assurance.”
Photo by Ralph Olazo on Unsplash
