The Justice Department sued TikTok on Friday, accusing the company of violating the Children’s Online Privacy Act and a settlement it reached with another federal agency.
The complaint, filed jointly with the Federal Trade Commission in federal court in California, comes as the United States and the social media giant are embroiled in a new legal battle to determine whether and how TikTok will continue to operate in the US.
The latest lawsuit focuses on allegations that TikTok, a trendsetter platform popular among young users, and its China-based parent company ByteDance, violated federal law that requires child-directed apps and websites to get parental consent before collecting personal information from children under the age of 13.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This step is necessary to prevent defendants who commit major, repeat crimes from collecting and using personal information of young children without parental consent or supervision,” Brian M. Boynton, Director of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said in a statement.
The US decided to sue following an FTC investigation into whether the companies were complying with an earlier settlement with TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly.
In 2019, the federal government sued Musical.ly, alleging that the company violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by failing to inform parents about the collection and use of personal information of children under the age of 13.
That same year, Musical.ly, which was acquired by ByteDance in 2017 and merged with TikTok, agreed to pay $5.7 million to settle those claims. The companies were also subject to court orders ordering them to comply with COPPA, which the government alleges have not been complied with.
In their complaint, the Justice Department and the FTC allege that TikTok knowingly allowed children to create accounts and retained their personal information without notifying parents. This practice extends to accounts created in “Kids Mode,” the version of TikTok aimed at children under the age of 13, the Justice Department said in a press release explaining the lawsuit.
The agencies allege that the information collected included activity on the app and other identifiers used to create user profiles. They also accuse TikTok of sharing data with other companies, including Meta’s Facebook and analytics firm AppsFlyer, to convince “kids mode” users to use the platform more, a practice TikTok calls “retargeting less active users.”
The lawsuit claims that TikTok allowed children to create accounts using credentials from third-party services without revealing their age or getting parental approval — what authorities call “age-unknown” accounts, of which they say there are millions.
Parents discovered some of their children’s accounts and asked for them to be removed, but federal authorities said the requests were not honored.
In a press release explaining the lawsuit, Judge Justice said the alleged violations allowed millions of children under the age of 13 to use the regular TikTok app to interact with adults and access adult content.
