The corporation has received a warning notice from British regulators, the first significant incident under the country's new laws protecting kids online.

The well-known video-sharing software TikTok might be hit with a fine of £27 million, or roughly $29 million, for failing to safeguard children's privacy in the UK.

British regulators on Monday sent a warning notice to TikTok, alleging that the company had handled children's information without the proper consent from their parents, processed sensitive information without a valid legal basis, and failed to make the platform's data practises understandable to children in the first significant case under new British rules protecting minors online.

The video-sharing software has been accused of failing to safeguard the privacy of younger users before. The owners of the platform that is now known as TikTok, Musical.ly, agreed to pay a fine of $5.7 million in 2019 to resolve allegations that they had broken the US federal legislation protecting the privacy of children online.

The British declaration comes as the American government works to allay fears about TikTok, which is controlled by Chinese internet behemoth ByteDance, regarding national security.

TikTok disagreed with the Information Commissioner's Office's findings in a statement, while emphasising that they were still preliminary. The statement read, 'We disagree with the preliminary opinions given and expect to formally react to the ICO in due course. While we recognise the ICO's role in protecting privacy in the U.K.

A privacy complaint has been filed against TikTok one year after Britain established stringent new online safety measures for kids known as the Children's Code.

Such laws require online businesses to design their services and products with children in mind, including social networks and game servers. Popular social media sites including YouTube, Snap, TikTok, and Instagram stated they were enhancing child safety in the months before the Children's Code went into effect in Britain last year.

British officials stated that the TikTok probe was a small component of a much larger operation in the UK to make sure businesses are adhering to the new regulations. According to John Edwards, the U.K. information commissioner, 'we have six ongoing investigations looking into companies providing digital services who haven't, in our initial view, taken their responsibilities around child safety seriously enough.' 'We are currently looking into how over 50 different online services are conforming with the Children's Code,' Edwards said.