TikTok is once again under fire for how it handles US users’ data. This, after having made every attempt to assure the US public and lawmakers that the Chinese authorities are not spying on Americans through the wildly popular social media app.
TikTok claims it has never provided any U.S. user data to the Chinese government, nor would it do so if asked, but US officials aren’t convinced.
Back in 2020, President Donald Trump threatened to ban TikTok entirely over concerns the Chinese government could use the app to surveil U.S. citizens.
At the time, a US national security panel ordered the social media giant to sell TikTok’s American business, but that never transpired.
TikTok Steps up Transparency Efforts, But New Allegations Surface
Instead, in a last-ditch effort to avoid losing what’s become their biggest market, TikTok initiated “Project Texas” and sought fervently to find ways to control access to U.S. user data.
This included opening a “Transparency Centre” in LA to report on all privacy and security concerns, and routing all its US traffic to Oracle servers in the US. All this while promising both its users and the Senate that access to US data would be “limited only to authorized personnel, pursuant to protocols being developed with the U.S. Government.”
Even so, in June, BuzzFeed broke the “TikTok Tapes” which showed TikTok employees who work with sensitive U.S. user data continue to report to executives in Beijing.
And in October, a Forbes article claimed ByteDance’s Internal Audit team intended to use TikTok to monitor the physical location of a specific U.S. user’s device on at least two occasions, without the user’s knowledge or consent.
TikTok Hits Back
In a series of tweets, TikTok claimed it had never been used to “target” the US government, public figures or journalists.
It also said the Forbes report lacked “both rigor and journalistic integrity”, having omitted the part of TikTok’s response that made Forbes’ core allegation moot, namely that as TikTok doesn’t collect precise GPS location data from US users, it couldn’t be monitoring US users in the way Forbes suggested.
As privacy concerns mount on both sides of the Atlantic, TikTok has announced its plans to update its EU Privacy Policy, admitting European users’ data can be accessed by employees in China and elsewhere outside the EU. However, it added that this is “subject to a series of robust security controls and approval protocols, and by way of methods that are recognised under the GDPR”. We assume similar controls must apply to TikTok’s handling of US user data.
Indeed, TikTok is understood to be working on a final agreement with the Biden Administration that aims to“fully safeguard user data and U.S. national security interests.”
Espionage or Paranoia?
Is it paranoid to suspect TikTok could be spying on you? Probably no more than to suspect any of the social media giants could be doing the same. Every social media site hoovers up data about you and what you do online, whether you’re actively using the app or not. You can’t rely on any of them to treat your data with respect, or for your government to protect you. If you value your privacy, you need to take measures to protect yourself online.
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