ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, announced on Thursday that an internal investigation revealed that staff improperly got the data of US TikTok users, including that of two journalists.
During the summer, a few of ByteDance workers on a team tasked with monitoring employee behavior attempted to identify the sources of alleged leaks of internal talks and company papers to media. Employees acquired access to the IP addresses and other data of two reporters and a limited number of others connected to the reporters through their TikTok accounts.
ByteDance Employees Gain Access to TikTok User Data in US
According to the company, they were attempting to ascertain whether these individuals were in close proximity to ByteDance staff. Despite their efforts, no leaks were discovered, as per NY Times.
The investigation was initiated after Forbes published an article, and the inquiry confirms a portion of that report and highlights the privacy and security risks associated with TikTok that have been raised for more than two years by US lawmakers, state governors, and the Trump and Biden administrations.
More than a dozen states have prohibited the use of TikTok on government-issued smartphones, and the business has been in lengthy talks with the administration over security and privacy safeguards that would prevent ByteDance and the Chinese government from gaining access to US user data.
Thursday, the general counsel of ByteDance, Erich Andersen, emailed workers with the results of an inquiry performed by an independent law firm. The corporation stated that all four workers implicated in the plan were terminated, contradicting an earlier announcement that one of the four had quit. Two of these people worked in China, while the remaining two worked in the United States.
ByteDance stated that it has overhauled its internal audit and risk team and eliminated the department's access to US data. Emily Baker-White, formerly of BuzzFeed and now of Forbes, and Cristina Criddle of the Financial Times were the targeted reporters, according to ByteDance, which declined to identify additional impacted TikTok users.
According to Forbes, two more of its former BuzzFeed-affiliated reporters were targeted. ByteDance stated that its research did not reveal that these more reporters were harmed, but that it will reexamine raw data to establish whether the accusations were genuine.
Forbes' chief content officer, Randall Lane, described it as "a direct assault on the concept of a free press and its crucial role in a functioning democracy." In a second email to staff, the CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, stated that such "misconduct is not at anyway typical of our corporate purpose."
He stated that the company "will continue to develop these access procedures, which have been greatly enhanced and fortified since this initiative's implementation."
TikTok Ensures US User Data is Secured
Chew stated that the firm has spent the past 15 months developing TikTok US Data Security (USDS) to ensure that secured user data remains in the United States.
"We have been methodically shutting down access points as we complete the shift of protected US user data management to the USDS department," he wrote.
Per Al Jazeera via MSN, ByteDance also announced that it was revamping the Internal Audit and Risk Control department, as well as the worldwide investigations role.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a national security authority, has attempted for months to strike an agreement with ByteDance to secure the data of more than 100 million US TikTok users, but it looks that no agreement will be achieved before the end of the year.
Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, stated on the incident that ByteDance "is trying to quell rising bipartisan worries over how it enables the Chinese Communist Party to access - and potentially weaponize - the data of American individuals."
Related Article: Elon Musk 'Will Resign' as Twitter CEO, But There's a Big Catch
@YouTube
