ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is likely to be fined more than €500 million for illegally transferring European user data to China. The Irish Data Protection Commission is expected to make a decision on the penalty by the end of the month, Bloomberg reports.
The potential fine follows a long-running investigation by Irish regulators that found the Chinese social network violated the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by sending information to China for engineers to access.
The fine imposed on parent company ByteDance could be the third largest in the history of Irish regulators. The state previously imposed a fine of €746 million on Amazon and €1.2 billion on Meta. The exact amount of the fine for TikTok has not yet been decided and is subject to change.
As part of the decision from the Irish Data Protection Commission, the regulator will order TikTok to suspend illegal data processing in China within a set period.
This is not the first time TikTok has come under fire from Irish regulators. In September 2023, the company was fined €345 million for violations related to the protection of children's personal data.
The investigation into data transfers to China began in 2021, when then-chairwoman Helen Dixon said that EU user data could be accessed by "maintenance and artificial intelligence engineers in China."
As a reminder, April 5 is the deadline for TikTok to sell its American division, or the social network will be blocked in the US. Among the surprise buyers who have filed applications at the last minute are Amazon and the founder of OnlyFans.