By Brazil Stock Guide – Brazil’s data protection authority fined ByteDance Brasil Tecnologia Ltda. R$153.8 million for violations involving the processing of children’s and teenagers’ personal data on TikTok, one of the largest penalties imposed under the country’s data protection law.
The National Data Protection Agency, or ANPD, also ordered ByteDance to delete data belonging to users aged 13 to 18 whose legal representation or assistance isn’t regularized within 60 business days, according to a decision published Tuesday in Brazil’s Official Gazette. The regulator said the sanctions cover five violations of Brazil’s General Data Protection Law, known as LGPD.
ByteDance, the Chinese technology group that owns TikTok, is privately held and has no publicly traded ticker.
The R$153.77 million total consists of two fines of R$63.18 million each for violations of articles 7 and 6, VIII, of the LGPD, plus a R$27.42 million penalty for breaching article 6, X.
ByteDance can obtain a 25% reduction by waiving its right to appeal and paying within the regulatory deadline. That would cut the penalty to about R$115.33 million. The company has 10 business days to appeal the first-instance decision and 20 business days from official notification to pay the fine.
Teen Data Must Be Deleted
The regulator ordered ByteDance to remove personal information belonging to teenagers between 13 and 18 whose legal representation or assistance isn’t regularized during the 60-business-day period.
ByteDance will then have five additional business days to provide the ANPD with a technical report backed by system audit logs and a formal declaration signed by its data protection officer confirming compliance.
The company must also identify third parties that received data belonging to affected teenagers and demonstrate that those organizations were instructed to delete the information from their own databases.
The ANPD may require an independent external audit if the documentation submitted by ByteDance isn’t sufficient to establish that the deletion has been completed.
Failure to comply with individual requirements can trigger daily penalties of R$137,081.49, equivalent to 0.5% of the fine associated with the conduct involving the registration of minors without what the regulator considered a valid legal basis.
Regulator Cites Five LGPD Violations
The investigation examined how TikTok processed information from young users both through registered accounts and through a feed accessible without creating an account.
The ANPD said TikTok processed children’s and teenagers’ personal data without an adequate legal basis in both environments and failed to implement effective measures to prevent improper collection. It also said ByteDance failed to demonstrate sufficiently effective safeguards showing compliance with Brazil’s data-protection rules.
The regulatory scrutiny dates back several years. Brazilian authorities began seeking explanations from ByteDance over TikTok’s processing of children’s and teenagers’ information as early as 2021, according to public documents from the agency.
TikTok Agrees to Compliance Plan
Alongside the sanctions, ByteDance committed to a compliance program aimed at strengthening protections for young TikTok users, according to the ANPD.
The measures include automatically applying more restrictive privacy settings to accounts belonging to users under 16, with changes requiring parental authorization, as well as stronger parental supervision tools and tighter content controls.
For users accessing TikTok without an account, the company committed to suspend advertising in Brazil, restrict access to content deemed appropriate for all ages and reduce the amount of personal information collected. The non-registered experience will also be limited to 12 hours and won’t allow posting, comments, direct messages, livestreams or other social interactions, according to the regulator.
The ANPD said the monetary sanctions address past conduct, while the compliance measures are designed to reduce future risks to children and teenagers using the platform.
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