CDP Institute

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission fined TikTok €530 million ($600 million) for breaching GDPR by transferring data to China without consent. The company intends to appeal, and claims China never requested data, and it never provided data to them. EU authorities believe data was at risk while being processed and faults TikTok for not being transparent with users.

Nigerians may lose Facebook and Instagram services if Meta makes good on its threat made to protest three sizeable fines imposed there. The fines levied by separate agencies are: 1) $220 million for alleged anti-competitive practices, 2) $37.5 million for unapproved advertising; and 3) $32.8 million for violating privacy laws.

Georgia is the eighth US state challenged on an age-verification law, as NetChoice swipes at the Georgia Children on Social Media Act. The business tech advocacy group sued Georgia over the new law which is due to go into effect this summer. Intended to protect the privacy of young children, the law requires companies to use “commercially reasonable efforts” to verify someone’s age and requires parental consent for minors to use social media.

Michigan’s Attorney General has sued television platform Roku for ongoing violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the Michigan Consumer Protection Act. The company is accused of systematically collecting, processing, and disclosing children’s data, which is not allowed under COPPA. The company is also accused of misleading parents about what data it collects.

Meta claims this will provide users multi-pronged protection, including from other party access, by protecting against attempted modifications that could post threats, and protection from being targeted.

They say privacy information provided to South Africans is far less than what is given to EU and other users. This is consistent with the concern that big tech traditionally gives short shrift to African country privacy laws as compared with laws in other parts of the world.