Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio

Through Resolution 62132 of 5 October 2020, the SIC determined that TiKTok's Information Processing Policy failed to comply with the Colombian regulations requirements by 47.37%.

The Superintendence of Industry and Commerce (SIC), in its role as national authority for the protection of personal data, issued an order of mandatory compliance to the companies ByteDance Ltd, TikTok. Inc, and TikTok Pte. Ltd. to implement measures in accordance with the Colombian standard in the proper processing of personal data.

TikTok holds and processes the personal data of 12,447,549 users domiciled or resident in Colombia, of which 1,933,835 are children and/or adolescents.  Due to the above, the SIC initiated an ex-officio investigation to verify if TikTok was complying with Colombian regulations regarding the collection and use of children and adolescents (NNA) data. The investigation took into account the decision of the United States Federal Trade Commission regarding the minors’ data collection.

Through Resolution 62132 of 5 October 2020, the SIC determined that TiKTok's Information Processing Policy (PTI, by its acronym in Spanish), a company domiciled in Beijing (China), fails to comply with the Colombian regulations requirements by 47.37%. In addition, the PTI applicable to Colombia is not written in Spanish, which makes it difficult for everyone to understand the rules on the processing of their personal data.

On the other hand, it was found that TiKTok does not meet 58.33% of the requirements demanded by Colombian regulations regarding what people must be informed of before obtaining their authorisation to collect and use their personal data.

The SIC was able to establish that TiKTok uses "cookies" to collect or process personal data in the national territory, so Law 1581 of 2012 is applicable to it because it collects or captures personal data through a tool that is installed in mobile devices and computers located in Colombia.

Non-compliance with these orders leads to sanctioning administrative investigations and fines of up to 2,000 times the Colombian legal minimum wage. The SIC informed that this decision can be challenged.