ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, has admitted that it improperly obtained users’ data. This includes data from a journalist from financial times. The business newspaper writes that this was done to investigate their site as part of an internal data leak investigation.
financial times It is based, among other things, on an email from the CEO of ByteDance. The newspaper stated that it considers it “totally unacceptable” when reporters are spied on, disrupt their work, or intimidate their sources.
“We will investigate this story more thoroughly before deciding on our official response,” the newspaper wrote. TikTok declined to comment on the post.
The tracking news comes at a time when TikTok is under fire. The program is already facing growing national security concerns from US politicians. In the US, there are particular concerns that data relating to US users could be passed on to the Chinese government. Beijing strongly denies this.
Last week, the US Senate unanimously voted on a bill that would ban federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices.
TikTok has been working on a security deal with the US government for months. As a result, American users’ data will henceforth be kept entirely in the United States. This means that US user data is stored in the US on US Oracle servers.
