The Italian Guarantor, a body of four members selected by Parliament to protect personal data, initiated proceedings Tuesday against the social media network TikTok for failing to protect minors, failing to prevent young children from joining the network, providing little clear information to TikTok users, and employing default settings which do not protect the privacy of users. The Guarantor originally requested a European task force from the European Protection Committee of Personal Data (EDPB) on January 24, 2020, to investigate the privacy risks TikTok creates for young users.

The initiation of proceedings by the Guarantor follows the US Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) mandate requiring nine media platforms, including TikTok, to report on their use of consumer data and an investigation of the platform by the English Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

The investigation launched by Italian authorities in March revealed: “a series of data processing carried out by the social network which appear to be non-compliant with the new regulatory framework for the protection of personal data.”

Amongst their complaints, the Guarantor alleges that the ban on enrollment for children under the age of 13 can easily be avoided by entering a false birth date, leading minors under the age of 13’s privacy to be endangered. Additionally, TikTok takes no measures to verify that Italian privacy standards that require parental consent for children under 14 to use the app are respected. The Guarantor also states that a warning should be added to the terms in language easily understood by children to make them more aware of the risks posed by using TikTok. Finally, they suggested that Tiktok’s default setting should create a private profile rather than a public profile and that their data retention times, which are “indefinite with respect to the purposes for which they are collected,” should be shortened to at least a temporal period.

TikTok has not yet publicly commented on the decision, but they have 30 days to respond to the proceedings officially.