Italy on Friday, January 22 announced a temporary ban on access to TikTok for users whose age cannot be guaranteed, an emergency measure taken by the authorities after the death of a girl who participated in a “scarf game” on the social network.
The Italian Personal Data Protection Authority announced in a statement that it was “immediately blocking the Chinese social network (TikTok)” until Feb. 15. By this date, TikTok must bring itself into compliance with the Italian regulator’s requirements.
Specifically, this means that TikTok is banned from using “the data of users whose absolute safety age has not been determined,” according to the independent authority’s details.
The decision comes hours after the death of a 10-year-old girl from Palermo, Sicily, who died playing a child’s game on TikTok. The girl was participating in the “hijab game” challenge when she used her phone to film herself choking on TikTok.
The Italian Data Protection Authority noted that TikTok did not refuse to register the girl, despite her being below the minimum age limit of 13 set by TikTok.
The Italian Personal Data Protection Authority had filed a lawsuit against TikTok in December 2019, accusing the Chinese company of “not paying attention to the protection of minors, making it easy for small children to circumvent the registration ban, and alleging that the information the company gives to users is not transparent and clear and that its pre-set settings do not respect the privacy of individuals.”
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