TikTok: US senators call for data security investigation

A US parliamentary committee has called for an investigation into TikTok’s data privacy practices. This further adds to the pressure mounting against the social network of the Chinese group ByteDance.

Worries about TikTok and data

At the heart of the controversy, a BuzzFeed article appeared in mid-June, claiming that ByteDance employees in China had access on numerous occasions to non-public data on American users of the application. TikTok has since confirmed this information and tried to respond to the concerns of American elected officials, without managing to reassure them.

Mark Warner and Marco Rubio, the chairman and vice chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, have written to the US consumer protection agency, the FTC, asking it to investigate a “apparent deception”. “Employees based in China were given full access to user information, including birthdates, phone numbers and other authentication data”they detail, before mentioning the Chinese law which requires companies in the country to share their data if Beijing asks them.

“As we’ve said over and over again, TikTok has never shared US user data with the Chinese government, and wouldn’t if asked”reacted a spokesperson for the social network.

Last month, the platform announced that all data relating to American users was now stored on servers of the Oracle group in the United States. A few days ago, the network sent a letter to US senators to assure them that access to information was done in accordance with a protocol of authorization and “strong” controls. Group officials also explained that ByteDance engineers will only be able to work on the platform’s algorithms in Oracle’s computing environment, without extracting data.