Reddit Fined Nearly ₹182 Crore For Failing to Handle Children's Data

Reddit has been fined £14.47 million (around $19.5 million, or roughly ₹182 crore) by the UK’s data protection regulator over failures linked to children’s privacy, including weak age checks and unlawful use of children’s personal information. The penalty was issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which said Reddit did not have adequate safeguards to verify users’ ages and that its approach put children at risk.

What the UK regulator found

According to Reuters, the ICO said Reddit failed to properly verify the ages of young users, resulting in the platform using data from children under 13 without authorisation. The regulator also said Reddit did not carry out a required risk assessment on children’s safety until after January 2025.

In its own detailed note, the ICO said Reddit’s terms prohibited children under 13, but it “did not have measures in place to check the age of users accessing its platform until July 2025.” The ICO added that it estimated “a large number of children under 13” were on Reddit and that Reddit lacked a lawful basis for processing their personal information.

Reddit’s response: privacy vs age assurance

Reddit has pushed back on the ICO’s expectations, arguing that requiring it to collect more information from every user cuts against user privacy. The company said it introduced age assurance measures in July 2025, including age verification to access mature content and asking users to declare their age when opening an account, but the ICO criticised reliance on self-declaration as “easy to bypass.”

The BBC reported that Reddit plans to appeal the ruling.

Why this matters beyond Reddit

The fine lands at a moment when regulators in the UK and Europe are sharpening their focus on children’s online safety, especially where platforms can be accessed by minors but rely primarily on “tick-a-box” age declarations. The ICO said it is keeping Reddit’s processing of children’s data under review and is continuing wider work on platforms that depend on self-declaration for age gating.

For users, the debate is now familiar: strong age assurance often demands more data collection, while privacy-first design tries to minimise what platforms know about you. Regulators, however, are signalling that “collect less” won’t be accepted if it means children can slip through and their data is processed without a valid legal basis.

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