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What is age appeal on TikTok? • What happens after a feature is removed from your account • How to appeal • How we use the information you submit to TikTok if you appeal • How we retain your information if you appeal • How we share your information if you appeal • How to get a copy of certain data if your access to an age-restricted feature is removed • Information for parents, guardians, and other trusted adults • Why it's important your teen provides their real date of birth • How you can support your teen • How we use your information if you help your teen appeal • What are your rights over your personal data? • How to contact us about privacy-related issues
What is age appeal on TikTok?
We may remove your access to certain features if we believe you don't meet the minimum age requirements, including:
• Livestream (minimum age 18 years and older)
• Purchase Coins (minimum age 18 years and older or 19 in South Korea)
• Send and receive direct messages (minimum age 16 years and older)
If you believe we made a mistake, you may submit an appeal. Learn more about our minimum age requirements in our Community Guidelines.
If your account has been banned because we believe you don't meet the minimum age requirement to use TikTok, learn more about underage appeals.
What happens after a feature is removed from your account
If your access to an age-restricted feature is removed, you'll receive a notification when you next open TikTok, informing you of this account change. You have 180 days from the date your access was removed to submit an appeal. You can still access your TikTok account and, if applicable, download any LIVE Replays, or direct messages that are not in violation of our Community Guidelines. If you don't appeal, or if your appeal isn't approved, you won't be able to access the age-restricted feature(s).
How to appeal
If you believe your access to an age-restricted feature was incorrectly removed, let us know by submitting an appeal.
To submit an appeal:
1. Open the notification in the TikTok app.
2. Tap Appeal to begin the appeal process.
3. Follow the instructions provided. We'll notify you of the result.
Depending on your age and location, you'll need to confirm your age through one of the following options:
Selfie with ID (if aged 16 years or older)
To appeal using a selfie with ID, you must provide the following:
• A photo of your government-issued ID.
• A selfie of you holding (a) the same government-issued ID and (b) a piece of paper clearly and legibly stating a unique code that we'll send you during the appeal process.
You may cover any parts of your ID that you have a legal right or obligation to do so.
Photo with parent/guardian (if aged between 16 to 17)
To appeal using a photo with a parent or guardian, you must provide the following:
• A photo that includes you and your parent or guardian who is over 25 years old. If your parent or guardian is not available, you can ask another trusted adult who is over 25 years old, for example, your grandparent, teacher, or aunt/uncle. Both of your faces must be clear and visible.
• Your parent, guardian, or other trusted adult must be looking at the camera and holding a piece of paper with the following items written clearly and legibly:
༚ Title the paper as "TikTok proof of age"
༚ Your date of birth
༚ A unique code that we'll send you during the appeal process
Credit card authorization (if aged 18 years or older)
To appeal through credit card authorization, you'll need to provide your credit card information. A small and temporary charge will be made to authenticate your credit card. You'll receive a refund for any charges incurred.
How we use the information you submit to TikTok if you appeal
If you submit an appeal, we'll ask you to provide some information to confirm your date of birth so we can decide whether to re-grant your access and inform you of our decision, as we have a legitimate interest in keeping the TikTok community safe and preventing misuse of our services per our Privacy Policy. We'll need different information depending on how you've chosen to confirm your date of birth.
Keep in mind:
• If your appeal is approved, we'll update the date of birth for your account.
• If your appeal isn't approved, we may update your date of birth depending on the information you submit. Your date of birth isn't visible to others on TikTok.
• We'll only use the information you submit to confirm your age and to inform you of our decision. For example, if you choose to provide photos, we won't show them on your TikTok profile or anywhere else on TikTok.
How we retain your information if you appeal
As soon as the appeal process is complete, we'll start the process to delete the information you submitted, including any selfies and photos of your ID.
If your appeal isn't approved:
• If you're aged 13 to 17 years, we'll delete your LIVE Replays 30 days from the date they were created. You can request your LIVE Replays that you still have access to.
• If you're aged 13 to 15 years, we'll maintain our original decision to remove your direct messaging access, but you can still request your direct messages.
If your appeal is approved:
• As long as you have a TikTok account, we'll keep a record of your date of birth, confirmation you appealed, how you appealed, and the result.
• We won't keep a copy of your ID, if provided, but we'll keep information relating to the ID authentication check carried out by our service provider. For example, the number of times your ID was reviewed if your first appeal was not approved and when our service provider sent us the authentication result.
• If you decide to delete your TikTok account, all the above data (together with the rest of your data) is sent for deletion.
• We'll create a record that allows us to track the status and details of your appeal. We’ll retain this record for 90 days and then delete it.
How we share your information if you appeal
Depending on how you've chosen to confirm your date of birth, we'll share the information you submit with our service providers, who help us check if your ID is authentic, or make a temporary credit card authorization. We won't share this information with any third parties outside of the appeals process.
How to get a copy of certain data if your access to an age-restricted feature is removed
If you lose access to an age-restricted feature, you can use our Download your data tool to request your data, including LIVE Replays and direct messages. You have 30 days to request your LIVE Replays after they have been created and 113 days (or 180 days if located in the European Economic Area (EEA), or 23 days in the U.S.) to request your direct messages. Keep in mind that you can only download data that doesn't violate our Community Guidelines.
Learn more about your rights and choices in our Privacy Policy.
Information for parents, guardians, and other trusted adults
If we believe someone is not old enough to use an age-restricted feature, we'll remove their access but they may appeal. If you're the parent, guardian, or other trusted adult of a teen whose account we ban or remove access to an age-restricted feature, they may ask you to help them submit an appeal.
Why it's important your teen provides their real date of birth
We're committed to providing an age-appropriate experience, so it's important that your teen provides their real date of birth. For example, we don't allow younger people on TikTok to use certain features. Learn more about teen privacy and safety settings.
How you can support your teen
We recommend that you review our Guardian's Guide to learn more about TikTok and the tools and controls we’ve created to help keep our community safe, as well as general information on common internet safety concerns. Reviewing these resources with your teen can help you create a dialogue about staying safe on TikTok.
How we use your information if you help your teen appeal
If your teen is eligible to appeal our decision to remove an age-restricted feature, we'll give them some options for confirming their date of birth. In certain countries, one of the options is Photo with Parent/Guardian which requires them to upload a photo of themselves with their parent, guardian, or other trusted adult who confirms their date of birth.
If your teen asks you to appear in a photo to appeal a ban:
• We'll only use the photo to decide whether to approve or not approve your teen's appeal. We rely on our legitimate interests, and those of your teen, as our legal basis to process the photo for this purpose. More specifically, we rely on the legitimate interest of keeping our community safe and preventing misuse of our services by granting your teen's access to age-restricted features only if they provide confirmation of their date of birth.
• We won't use it for any other purpose and we won't show the photo anywhere on TikTok.
• The photo will be stored by a third party service provider.
• As soon as the appeal process is complete, we'll start the process to delete the photo.
What are your rights over your personal data?
If you’re living in the European Economic Area, the UK, or Switzerland and your teen appeals their ban by submitting a photo of themselves with you, this photo will contain your personal data and TikTok Ireland and TikTok UK will be the joint controllers of that photo, as defined in our Privacy Policy.
To ensure the photo benefits from an adequate level of protection when it is transferred to our third-party service provider that will store it, we'll use European Commission approved standard contractual clauses under Article 46 of the GDPR. You can request a copy of these standard contractual clauses through our online form.
You have the right to:
• Object to our use of your photo and ask us to restrict our processing of it.
• Ask us to provide you with access to the photo.
• Ask us to delete or rectify the photo.
To exercise these rights, you can contact us through our online form
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission if you live in the EEA, and with your local supervisory authority.
How to contact us about privacy-related issues
To ask us about our Privacy Policy, you can contact us through our online form.
If you’re living in the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, you can contact our Data Protection Officer through our online form.