TikTok Secretly Searched User Information... 'Chinese App' Security Threat Rekindled

User Account Access to Identify Information Leakers
'US National Security Threat' Controversy Remains Unresolved

Employees of ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, have been fired after being found to have inappropriately accessed user account data, sparking controversy.

According to reports from the US daily The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and Reuters on the 22nd (local time), the dismissed employees include four staff members from the audit department who were investigating a company information leak. Reuters cited sources familiar with the matter, stating that two of the four worked in China, while the other two were based in the United States.

While investigating the company information leak, they reportedly accessed user account data of a journalist formerly from the internet media BuzzFeed, now working at the US economic magazine Forbes, and a journalist from the UK financial newspaper Financial Times (FT). In particular, they examined IP addresses to check whether the suspected internal leakers and these journalists were in the same location.

Photo by AP·Yonhap News

However, it is reported that they failed to identify the information leaker. ByteDance is also undergoing a restructuring of the audit department related to this incident.

The aftermath of this incident is expected to not subside easily.

CEO Liang Rubo expressed in an email to employees that he was very disappointed upon receiving the report of this incident and criticized it as a "serious violation of the company's code of conduct."

Liz Grams, spokesperson for BuzzFeed, condemned the act as "disregarding the rights of not only TikTok users but also journalists."

The video-sharing platform TikTok has seen a significant increase in users in the United States, raising concerns that the Chinese government could exert influence over user data collection or recommendation algorithms, leading to it being identified as a security threat.

In fact, Reuters reported that the US Congress is expected to pass a bill this week banning federal government employees from downloading and using TikTok on government-owned devices. Similar regulations are already in effect in more than ten US states.

Additionally, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has been pushing for months to establish a national security agreement with ByteDance to protect the data of over 100 million TikTok users in the US, but no agreement has yet been reached.

Previously, during the Donald Trump administration in 2020, the US government issued an executive order requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok, but this was canceled after President Joe Biden took office, citing unenforceability.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.