TikTok

Is TikTok safe?

TikTok is not malware, and for an adult who keeps their expectations low it is a manageable risk. But it collects more than most apps, uses that data to track you for advertising, and has been fined more for privacy failures than any other app we score. For children, the bigger problem is design: the European Commission said in 2026 that TikTok's endless feed and minors' default settings breach EU law. We score it 41/100.

How much data TikTok collects

Apple's privacy label for TikTok is one of the longest on the App Store. Contact information and identifiers are used to track you across other companies' apps and websites. Linked to your identity are precise and coarse location, contacts, browsing history, search history, purchases, financial information, messages and other content, and diagnostic data. Only some usage data is listed as not linked to you.

None of this is unique to TikTok. Instagram collects a similar range. What sets TikTok apart is where the data has gone.

The China question, answered with rulings

Ireland's Data Protection Commission is TikTok's lead privacy regulator in the EU. It has fined the company twice:

Date	Fine	Finding
September 2023	€345 million	Child users' accounts set to public by default, and a "Family Pairing" feature that let unverified adults link to children's accounts
May 2025	€530 million	Personal data of European users was accessed remotely by staff in China without protection equivalent to EU law, and the privacy policy did not say so

The second decision included a detail that should worry anyone who took TikTok at its word. Throughout the inquiry TikTok said it did not store EEA user data on servers in China. In April 2025 it told the regulator it had discovered that limited EEA user data had in fact been stored there. TikTok says the data has been deleted, and it is appealing the decision.

In the UK, the ICO fined TikTok £12.7 million in April 2023 for processing the data of children under 13 without parental consent. In the US, the Justice Department sued TikTok and ByteDance in August 2024 over children's data, saying the company had broken a 2019 settlement made by its predecessor Musical.ly.

The US ownership has since changed. On 22 January 2026 the TikTok USDS Joint Venture took over American operations. Investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX hold 80.1% and ByteDance 19.9%, and the recommendation algorithm is being retrained on US data inside Oracle's cloud. That addresses the legal concern about China. It does not change how much data the app collects.

What parents should know

TikTok has added real protections for teenagers. Accounts for 13 to 15-year-olds are private by default and cannot use direct messages, and under-18s get a 60-minute daily screen-time prompt that can be bypassed with a passcode. Family Pairing lets a parent's account manage a teen's settings.

Regulators say this is not enough. In February 2026 the European Commission issued preliminary findings that autoplay and infinite scroll amount to "addictive design" in breach of the Digital Services Act. On 23 July 2026 it added that minors' default settings expose them to cyberbullying, unwanted contact and predatory behaviour. TikTok disputes the findings. A final decision could bring a fine of up to 6% of global turnover.

The practical risks for a child are hours lost to the feed, contact from strangers through comments and duets, and dangerous "challenge" videos. Scams on TikTok tend to target adults: fake giveaways, counterfeit goods on TikTok Shop and investment "gurus" pushing people to Telegram groups.

Settings to change today

1. Make your account private in Settings and privacy > Privacy > Private account. Adults' accounts start public.
2. In the same Privacy menu, limit who can comment, duet, stitch and send you messages to Friends or No one.
3. Turn off "Suggest your account to others" so contacts and people nearby are not shown your profile.
4. For a child, set up Family Pairing from Settings and privacy > Family Pairing on both phones, and set a screen-time limit with your own passcode.
5. Do not sync your contacts. If you already did, remove them in the privacy settings.

How we scored it

TikTok's regulatory record (18) is among the lowest we have given, after €875 million in Irish fines between 2023 and 2025. Privacy (28) reflects ad tracking and very broad data collection, and scams and harmful content (38) the EU's findings on minors. Security (55) is middling. Snapchat and Roblox raise different child-safety issues and are worth comparing.