TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, could be slapped with a fine exceeding €500 million in the European Union for illegally transferring European users’ data to China.
Bloomberg reports that the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), the primary regulator for tech companies within the EU, is expected to announce the fine by the end of April.
This follows an investigation that began in 2021, which uncovered that TikTok had sent data on European users to China, granting access to the app’s developers.
The violation breaches the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which could result in a hefty fine.
If imposed, the fine could make it the third-largest ever for GDPR violations in the EU, following fines imposed on Amazon (€746 million) and Meta (€1.2 billion). The final amount of the fine and the exact timeline for the decision remain uncertain, according to sources cited by Bloomberg.
