TikTok Hit With Privacy Suit Over Facial Recognition Features
"Defendants' readiness to sacrifice the privacy rights of the TikTok App's users is particularly troubling given their demographic makeup, which consists of many minor users," wrote lawyers from Hausfeld and Burns Charest in a class action complaint filed Thursday.
April 30, 2020 at 09:41 PM
3 minute read
TikTok app.
Social media company TikTok Inc. is the latest tech company to be targeted with a biometric privacy class action.
Hausfeld in San Francisco and Burns Charest in Dallas filed a class action complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Thursday, alleging that TikTok violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act by storing users' facial geometry.
"Defendants do not inform the App's users that their biometric data is being collected, captured, received, obtained, stored, and/or used by the App. Nor do Defendants disclose what they do with that data, who has access to that data, and whether, where, and for how long that data is stored," wrote the plaintiffs' lawyers.
TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Inc. and operates out of three offices in California, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday evening.
Two Illinois minors and their guardians brought the complaint against the app formerly known as Musical.ly. The complaint contends that active users, 60% of which are 16 to 24 years old, never consented to the facial scans.
"Defendants' readiness to sacrifice the privacy rights of the TikTok App's users is particularly troubling given their demographic makeup, which consists of many minor users," the lawsuit asserts.
The plaintiffs' lawyers also noted the company's $5.7 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission in 2017 over reported violations of the Children's Online Privacy Act, as well as a December lawsuit that the company settled one day after it was filed in the Northern District of Illinois. The $1.1 million deal settled claims that the company sought personally identifiable information from children without parental consent.
In addition to the standard statutory damages between $1,000 and $5,000 per violation, users are asking for TikTok to comply with BIPA and set a publicly available retention schedule and policies for handling users' biometric data.
Hausfeld's Megan Jones, Seth Gassman and Burns Charest's Will Thompson did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.
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