TikTok employees in China can view certain information from US users, such as videos and comments. Bytedance CEO Xu Zhiqiu wrote this in a letter to nine US senators, Bloomberg reports.
According to Chew, the data is accessed under “strong security protocols”. He writes that no data was passed to the Chinese government. Senators accuse TikTok of “surveilling American consumers”.
Bytedance retains all US user data in the United States. US data should only be stored on the servers of the US technology company Oracle. Bytedance also has backups on its own servers in Singapore. The TikTok platform itself must also be ported to Oracle servers.
‘Affirmation of fear’
“TikTok’s response underscores our concerns about the influence of the Chinese Communist Party in the company,” Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn told Bloomberg. “The company should have been honest about it from the start, but they tried to keep it a secret. If Americans use TikTok, they should know Communist China has their information.”
Apple and Google asked to remove TikTok
Earlier this week, an FCC commissioner asked Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores over concerns about how the Chinese company handles user data.
According to the commissioner, TikTok poses an “unacceptable risk to national security” because the Chinese government “apparently has uncontrolled access” to users’ sensitive data. Apple and Google should respond by July 8.
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