TikTok agrees to pay US$92 million to settle privacy lawsuit

Short-form video app TikTok has agreed to pay US$92 million to settle a lawsuit over alleged privacy violations.

The Chinese social video app was facing 21 class action lawsuits over a series of claims that it was collecting “highly sensitive personal data” to track users and target ads towards them. The class action lawsuits made multiple allegations, including claims that TikTok analysed users’ faces to determine key information about them.

TikTok has rejected the allegations, but said that it didn’t want to litigate the issue. A spokesperson said that “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.”

Going forward, TikTok has agreed to avoid behaviours that could compromise its user privacy unless specifically disclosed in its privacy policy. This includes storing biometric information, collecting GPs data and sending US users’ data outside of the country.