The UK’s information safety watchdog has fined Reddit £14.47m after discovering critical failings in how the platform dealt with kids’s private info.
The penalty, issued by the Data Commissioner’s Workplace (ICO), follows an investigation that concluded Reddit had did not implement sturdy age assurance mechanisms and didn’t have a lawful foundation for processing the info of kids underneath 13.
Beneath UK information safety legislation, kids’s info should be given particular safety. The ICO stated Reddit didn’t have efficient methods in place to confirm customers’ ages till July 2025, regardless of its phrases of service prohibiting under-13s from accessing the platform.
The regulator additionally discovered that Reddit failed to hold out an information safety influence evaluation (DPIA) addressing dangers to kids till January 2025, regardless that customers aged 13 to 18 had been permitted to hitch.
John Edwards, the UK Data Commissioner, described the failings as unacceptable. “Youngsters underneath 13 had their private info collected and utilized in methods they may not perceive, consent to or management,” he stated. “Counting on customers to declare their age themselves just isn’t sufficient when kids could also be in danger.”
In July 2025, Reddit launched new measures together with age verification for entry to mature content material and requiring customers to declare their age at account creation. Nevertheless, the ICO has warned that self-declaration alone presents dangers, as it may be simply bypassed.
The regulator stated it might proceed monitoring Reddit’s method as a part of wider enforcement exercise targeted on on-line platforms that rely totally on self-declared ages.
The tremendous takes into consideration the variety of kids doubtlessly affected, the length of the failings and Reddit’s international turnover.
The ICO’s motion follows its ongoing supervision of platforms underneath the UK’s Age Acceptable Design Code, also called the Youngsters’s Code, which units out requirements for providers more likely to be accessed by under-18s.
The regulator has stated safeguarding kids’s privateness on-line stays a precedence and confirmed it would proceed working intently with Ofcom, which enforces the On-line Security Act, to make sure coordinated oversight of digital platforms.
The choice underscores intensifying scrutiny of tech corporations working within the UK, notably round age verification and the lawful processing of kids’s information.
