02-02-2021 by Mirai
Italy announced on Friday that it had temporarily blocked access to TikTok to users whose age is not guaranteed, a measure that was taken urgently after the death of a girl who participated in the "veil 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 should have satisfied the demands of the Italian regulator.
Scarf set
This specifically means that TikTok is prohibited from using "the data of users whose age has not been established with absolute security," the independent authority detailed.
This decision comes just hours after news of the death in Palermo, Sicily, of a 10-year-old girl, suffocated while participating in a "headscarf game" challenge while recording herself with her portable phone on Tik Tok. The hypothesis that the police are considering in the case of little Antonella Sicomero is that she fainted while participating in challenges called #blackoutchallenge, which consists of checking who is able to stop breathing for longer. The initiative echoed by the Italian media; the one that did not exist on Sunday morning or trace on the social network - it may have been eliminated or that it was a hoax - would have caused him the subsequent fainting and later a coma. She was later transferred to the Giovanni Di Cristina childrens hospital in Palermo, where the doctors told the family that the young woman would not wake up.
However, the registration of the latter on the network, very popular among teenagers, "has not been rejected by the company" despite the girls age, less than the minimum of 13 years that TikTok provides, underlines the Authority of Data Protection.
The same body initiated a process against TikTok in December 2019, criticizing its "lack of attention to the protection of minors, the ease of circumventing the ban on registering for the smallest and the lack of transparency and clarity in the information that also is provided to users ". as predefined environments that do not respect privacy. "
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