According to the internal communication, TikTok shares the data of US users with the Chinese headquarters. This is the behavior that made this app nearly banned in 2020.
According to leaked audio recordings from more than 80 TikTok internal meetings, ByteDance employees in China’s headquarters have repeatedly accessed sensitive data about TikTok users in the US.
BuzzFeed said that this is the behavior that led former US President Donald Trump to threaten to ban TikTok in this country.
Previously, in October 2021, during a hearing before the US Senate, TikTok’s Vice President of Public Policy Michael Beckerman asserted the opposite.
Although there is no specific number on how long US user data was compromised, based on published information, at least Chinese engineers had access to US data for the period of time from September 2021 to January 2022.
Nine statements by eight different employees describe situations in which US employees contacted their colleagues in China to learn how US user data was moving. According to the recordings, American employees are not authorized or do not know how to access their own data.
“Everything is monitored from China,” a member of TikTok’s Safety and Trust department said during a meeting in September 2021. In another meeting, an engineer in Beijing was called the “Master Admin” who “had access to everything”.
“We know we are one of the most scrutinized platforms from a security perspective, and we also look forward to removing doubts about the data security of US users.
That’s why we hire security experts who are constantly working to evaluate standards and partner with reputable 3rd parties to test the security of the platform,” said Maureen Shanahan, a spokesman for ByteDance. The company would not comment further.
@ Zing News
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Source: Vietnam Insider