"It's taken every penny of my savings and gone into my overdraft.''
A mum in the UK is claiming her young daughter was scammed into spending an eye-watering £3,500 (€3,800) just to lip sync with an influencer on the popular app TikTok.
Over the course of a month the girl racked up the bill without her parents knowledge and subsequently sent the family into overdraft.
The Cambridgeshire girl's phone was linked to an iTunes account, which used her mum's bank details, and she was using the account to spend money on TikTok.
The mum told Cambridgeshire Live her daughter is "obsessed" with a 24-year-old influencer and was buying 'coins' on the app so she could lip sync with the young internet star.
She also claims her daughter also exchanged 'coins' to have private video calls with the influencer.
"She is 11-years-old and she's been talking to this man and spending loads of money to do duets with him,'' the mum said.
"My daughter still doesn't see that she's been scammed. She's obsessed with him.
"I've now messaged [the man] from her phone, and said I was her mum. He didn't believe me, and he didn't seem to care about the money.
"We didn't realise that the card was attached to the account and so didn't realise she was spending all this money.
"We didn't get any notification from iTunes or the bank even though she was spending hundreds of pounds a day.
"It's taken every penny of my savings and gone into my overdraft.
"It's wiped out all my money. It's all the money I had, it's over £3,500 and all my overdraft, and I now have not one penny left for me and my family".
TikTok statement.
A TikTok spokesman said: "We are committed to maintaining a fun, positive environment, and has strict policies against any deceptive or inappropriate behaviour.
"We are very sorry to hear about this user's experience and have opened an internal investigation as part of our regular review process, which will help us further strengthen our internal controls.
"We encourage users to report any potentially inappropriate behaviour through our in-app reporting function or by emailing us at [email protected].
"Parents concerned about the possibility of accidental in-app purchases should ensure that the payment function is disabled.”
So what is TikTok?
Users film videos of themselves lip-syncing or acting out comedy sketches, up to 15 seconds long, and can choose from a database of songs, effects, or sound bites.
Earlier this year in February, TikTok hit One-Billion downloads globally.
