Brazil Fines TikTok Record R$ 153.7 Million Over Children's Data Privacy

Brazil's National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) has fined ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, R$ 153.7 million for violations regarding the treatment of data from children and adolescents. This represents the largest penalty ever imposed by the agency since its creation in 2020. The ANPD concluded that TikTok failed to implement sufficient measures to prevent the illegal collection of data from minors, specifically citing failures in age verification and the existence of a logged out feed that allowed users to bypass registration. The regulator estimated that TikTok may have processed the data of at least 8 million children, some of whom were under 13 years old. The agency found that the platform used this data for prohibited purposes, such as targeted advertising, and lacked a valid legal basis for the collection. In addition to the fine, TikTok must erase illegally obtained data and implement a compliance plan to strengthen youth protection. This plan includes restricting the logged out experience to 12 hours and applying stricter settings for users under 16. ByteDance has ten working days to appeal the decision or twenty days to pay the fine. The company stated that the violations refer to a period starting in 2021 and do not reflect its current compliance plan approved in 2025. ByteDance also argued that its data collection was for security and basic platform functionality, a claim the ANPD rejected due to a lack of evidence.