Rome (AFP)
Italy announced on Friday that it had temporarily blocked access to TikTok for users whose age is not guaranteed, a measure taken urgently after the death of a girl who participated in the "headscarf game" on the social network.
The Authority for the Protection of Personal Data said in a statement to "block the Chinese social network" with immediate effect and until February 15, when it must have satisfied the demands of the Italian regulator.
This concretely means that TikTok is prohibited from using "the data of users whose age has not been established with absolute security," detailed the independent authority.
This decision comes a few hours after the announcement of the death in Palermo, in Sicily (south), of a 10-year-old girl, asphyxiated while taking part in a "headscarf game" challenge while filming herself with her phone. laptop on TikTok.
However, the registration of the latter on the network, very popular among adolescents, "was not refused by the company" despite the girl's age, lower than the 13 years minimum provided by TikTok, underlines the Data Protection Authority.
The same body launched proceedings against TikTok in December 2019, criticizing it for its "lack of attention to the protection of minors, the ease of bypassing the ban on registering for the little ones and the lack of transparency and clarity information given to users as well as pre-defined settings that do not respect privacy ".
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