TikTok is again under fire as several news agencies reported that data of users of entertainment apps in the United States was accessed by its employees in China.
According to a report by BuzzFeed News, employees of ByteDance got access to the private data of US users. This is in direct conflict with earlier statements from TikTok. The company stated earlier that the data generated from the USA got stored inside the USA.
BuzzFeed got access to more than 80 audio recordings of meetings happening at TikTok. After analysing the recorded material, BuzzFeed released a report. BuzzFeed concluded that non-US personnel had access to non-public data of US users of TikTok.
This report will have a huge impact on TikTok legally and politically. Chinese companies is US are always under barrages of allegations of data theft.
From the analysis of the audio recordings, the news agency confirmed that, out of 9 meetings of TikTok employees, at least 14 statements were made regarding how Chinese engineers had access to TikTok data of US users between September 2021 and January 2022.
Master Admin
Recordings also contained comments made by a member of the Trust and Safety department at TikTok. In a meeting on September 2o21, a member of the department said that everything is seen in China. In another meeting in the same month, a director was referring to a “master admin” (allegedly based in Beijing) who had access to everything on the platform.
BuzzFeed reported that they haven’t been able to identify who is this “Master Admin”.
The contents of audio recordings clearly show that data was being accessed by non-US personnel at TikTok and ByteDance regularly.
This implies the fact that statements made by TikTok executives in the United States Senate in 2021 regarding data of US users are false. During the Senate hearing in October 2021, the company stated that it is not them but the “world-renowned, US-based security team” who decides who all gets access to data of users of the app from the United States.
The committee on Foreign Investment in the United States had begun an investigation against TikTok in 2019. The investigation was due to the national security challenges posed by data stored by TikTok. In 2020, the then President of the United States, Donald Trump, threatened to ban TikTok country-wide. He said that it was a national security threat. He believed that the Chinese government would use the data of US citizens using the app.
It is a known unknown that all companies in China are under the control of the Chinese Communist Party.
