Parent company TikTok spies on US journalists

Employees of ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of popular video app TikTok, improperly accessed the data of American TikTok users, including two journalists, last summer. This is according to the company’s internal investigation, US media reports.

Byte Dance has laid off four employees. Two of them were from China and two from the US.

Journalists from the business magazine Forbes have been spied on since last summer and monitored for physical proximity to ByteDance employees. Among other things, employees had access to journalists’ IP addresses and user data.

Staff received the data when they inquired about the possibility of a leak from Byte Dance to the press. Internal conversations and business documents shared with the press.

Forbes TikTok has published several articles about whether it shares sensitive user data with the Chinese government. An investigation into the leaks has since begun. However, the cause of the leak has not been identified The New York Times.

According to the business magazine, two more of their journalists were targeted by the bait dance. The tech company says it didn’t come up with its own research. The company will reanalyze the raw data to determine if the allegation is correct.

The revelations come amid growing concern in US politics about privacy and security risks facing TikTok users. 100 million Americans use the popular app.

According to US security officials, TikTok is very closely linked to its Chinese parent company. According to them, sensitive information ends up in the hands of the Chinese government, which Beijing firmly denies.

The US Senate last week passed a bill that would ban federal employees from using TikTok on government devices.

The app has been working for months on a deal with the US government that allows the company to keep US users’ data entirely in the US. This should be done, inter alia, by storing US data on servers in the US.