Sol. South Korea's media regulator is going to investigate the social media platform TikTok for violating the country's personal data protection law. A regulator official gave this information on Monday.
Yonhap news agency quoted industry sources as saying that TikTok is violating Korean law.
TikTok is accused of forcing users to receive automated advertisements. Under Korean law, it is mandatory for any company to obtain the consent of users for such content.
The Korean Communications Commission (KCC) suspects TikTok is violating the Act for the Promotion of Information and Communications Network Use and Data Protection, the Korean official said. Investigation of the video sharing platform will be started soon.
“We believe there are some issues with TikTok's terms of service and obtaining explicit consent from users,” the official said.
Korean agencies also suspect TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, that the company does not share complete content regarding its terms of service and privacy policy to the users joining the platform.
Under the relevant law, companies must give users the freedom to decide whether they want to receive advertising or not. “Explicit” consent of the User is required before sending such content to any User.
Violators of the law could be fined up to 30 million won ($22,279).
Last month, the Nepal Telecommunication Authority directed the country's internet and mobile service providers to lift the ban on TikTok in line with the cabinet decision on the shortvideo app. On August 22, Nepal's cabinet decided to lift the ban on TikTok. This ban on TikTok was imposed in November last year.
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Image Credit: KhasKhabar.