COMPANY PROFILE

ByteDance

Headquarters: Beijing, China · Founded: 2012

7 fines or sanctions1 data breach

What it does and how it makes money

Chinese technology company based in Beijing that owns TikTok and its Chinese version Douyin, plus CapCut, Lemon8, the Toutiao news app and the Lark/Feishu workplace tool. In the United States, since January 2026 TikTok has been run by a joint venture (TikTok USDS Joint Venture) in which ByteDance holds 19.9%.

It makes money from advertising in its apps and from e-commerce and paid services inside them. ^[1]

What data it collects about you

According to TikTok's privacy policy, it collects account details, content you create or send (including messages), device and network data, approximate location (precise if you enable it), usage activity and cookies, and data from advertisers and partners; it also infers age, gender and interests. It uses this to personalise the feed and to show and measure ads. ^[2]

How it turns your data into money

TikTok collects how you use the app (videos and ads you watch, searches, what you like and whom you follow), technical device data (IP, advertising identifiers, keystroke patterns, battery state) and infers your interests, gender and age range. Advertisers, publishers and measurement partners send it information about what you do off TikTok (purchases online or in stores, hashed emails and phone numbers), which TikTok matches with your account to personalise ads on and off the platform. It shares with advertisers and measurement companies how many users viewed or clicked an ad. If you buy sneakers on a website that uses TikTok Advertiser Tools, the app may later show you ads from that brand. ^[3]

Where it is incorporated

ByteDance Ltd., TikTok's parent, is incorporated in the Cayman Islands and based in Haidian, Beijing; it was founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming and Liang Rubo. ^[1]

Taxes and low-tax countries

The associated entity ByteDance Ltd. is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, while actual operations are run from Beijing. No tax ruling or tax court case in Europe or the U.S. was found; in India the government froze ByteDance's bank accounts over alleged tax evasion, which the company disputed. ^[1]

Competition and monopoly

On September 5, 2023 the European Commission designated ByteDance a 'gatekeeper' under the Digital Markets Act for TikTok. ByteDance appealed, arguing its market value came mainly from China and that TikTok was a 'challenger', but the EU General Court dismissed the action on July 17, 2024 (Case T-1077/23), noting TikTok's rapid growth in the EU. In March 2021 China's regulator SAMR fined a ByteDance subsidiary for antitrust violations. No abuse-of-dominance finding was found. ^[4]

Money

120,000Employees (2025) ^[1]

Fines and sanctions

In total: 890.8 million EUR + 12.7 million GBP + 5.7 million USD

Data Protection Commission (DPC) · Ireland · May 2, 2025530 million EUR
Transferring European TikTok users' data to China without ensuring protection equivalent to the EU's (€485M) and not clearly informing users about those transfers (€45M). Fine on TikTok Technology Limited. ^[5]
AGCM (Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato) · Italy · March 202410 million EUR
Consumer protection: inadequate controls over content that may endanger minors and vulnerable people, such as the 'French scar' challenge. Fine on three TikTok group companies. ^[6]
Data Protection Commission (DPC) · Ireland · September 1, 2023345 million EUR
Processing of children's data: accounts set to public by default and other protection and transparency failures towards child users (July–December 2020). ^[7]
Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) · United Kingdom · April 202312.7 million GBP
Allowing about 1.4 million children under 13 to use TikTok without parental consent and not doing enough to detect and remove them. ^[8]
CNIL · France · December 29, 20225 million EUR
Cookies: on tiktok.com refusing them was not as easy as accepting them, and users were not properly informed of their purposes. ^[9]
Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP) · Netherlands · July 2021750,000 EUR
Not providing privacy information in Dutch to users in the Netherlands, including children. ^[10]
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) · United States · February 27, 20195.7 million USD
Settlement with the FTC: Musical.ly (now TikTok) collected names, emails and other data from children under 13 without parental consent, violating COPPA. These are the FTC's allegations, resolved by settlement. ^[11]

Data breaches and hacks

December 2022
ByteDance admitted that some of its employees improperly accessed TikTok user data, including IP addresses, of two journalists while hunting for internal leaks. Four employees were fired. ^[12]

Ask it to delete your data

This is the page the company itself gives to ask it to delete your data or stop selling it: Open its page ^[13]

With GUARDIANA or GUARDIANA ZERO, you download from this same profile the letter asking it to delete your data, under your country’s law, ready to attach to an email.

Its website

https://www.bytedance.com/

Does this company follow you? GUARDIANA ZERO, GUARDIANA’s browser, cuts its connections and shows you how many times it tried. Meet GUARDIANA ZERO →

Sources

What this profile does NOT say

It does not say this company does anything illegal. The only thing it states about anyone’s legality is what a regulator or a court has already decided, with the date and the link to the source.
It does not say what data of yours it holds: only the company knows, which is why you have the right to ask it.
If you are this company and a fact is wrong, write to hola@guardianagroup.com and it will be corrected, with its date.

Public facts with their sources, checked on October 12, 2026. All profiles →