Are you remotely surprised?
If you thought TikTok has essentially been spying on you, guess what? You’re right! A leaked audio log has unveiled the fact that the service has been sharing its US user data with China, where TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance is primarily based.
Per BuzzFeed, Audio leaked from internal meetings shows that ByteDance’s engineers in China could see everything. A grand total of 14 statements from 9 different TikTok employees have confirmed that these engineers have accessed this user data. And, as an added bonus, TikTok employees in the US don’t have access to that data.
As a matter of fact. if they needed access to that data, they had to get an engineer in China to do it for them. One such engineer in Beijing was even referred to as a “Master Admin.”
As for how long this has been the case, well, that’s overall uncertain. But as the recordings confirm, it was at least between September 2021 to January 2022. Considering that they gave the following statement back in 2019:
We store all TikTok US user data in the United States, with backup redundancy in Singapore. Our data centers are located entirely outside of China, and none of our data is subject to Chinese law.
TikTok, circa 2019
Of course, alongside that, they stated that they don’t operate in China, nor did they have any intent to do so. Which seems to just exclude the ByteDance engineers, I guess, since they’re not TikTok employees.
In response to the leak, TikTok’s Maureen Shanahan said the following to BuzzFeed:
We know we’re among the most scrutinized platforms from a security standpoint, and we aim to remove any doubt about the security of US user data. That’s why we hire experts in their fields, continually work to validate our security standards, and bring in reputable, independent third parties to test our defenses.
Maureen Shanahan
And, funny enough, the very day all of this leaks to the public, the company announced that all of TikTok’s user data from the US would now be routed through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. and that all private US user data would be deleted from their servers in the US and Singapore. Why, they’ll even have a new department, specifically for the purposes of managing US user data, with US-based leadership.
Wow, what an incredible coincidence that fixes this entire PR nightmare forever. Which, I might add is in no way suspicious at all. yep, I’m certain it’s nasty weather smooth sailing from here on out for TikTok, and its userbase primarily made up of underage users and 20-30-somethings.
Source: PC Mag
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