Recordings confirm that the data of American users of TikTok is accessible from China, while the director had assured the opposite before the Senate.
These suspicions were confirmed by leaked audio recordings of more than 80 internal meetings at TikTok, where the issue of US data is discussed several times.
TikTok management not very honest
After being regularly questioned about the storage of data from users of its application, TikTok had appeared before the United States Congress and Senate. Management then claimed, under oath, that all data was stored on American servers, with a back-up in Singapore, and guarded by a security team. world famous “. TikTok had certified that this data was not subject to analysis by the Chinese government, and that if censorship were to apply to the content of its platform, it would not give in.
However, the recordings tell a completely different story. Eight Chinese employees explain that their American counterparts had to repeatedly ask them for information on how the data of American users was used by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. Indeed, the firm’s employees in the United States have neither control over the flow of data nor the information to determine what is seen in China.
US data accessible in China
The recordings repeatedly imply that TikTok employees in China can access US user data easily. The reality is that Chinese censorship scrutinizes absolutely everything that circulates inside the country’s Internet. US user data is therefore no exception, despite ByteDance’s claims. These suspicions have been around for a long time, and Trump had even threatened to ban the app from US territory.
Thus, the location of servers outside China does not seem to prevent employees in the country from accessing foreign data. In order to overcome this problem, TikTok has created “Project Texas”, an initiative that aims to store sensitive data on servers in Texas and make it inaccessible from abroad. However, only information such as name and date of birth would be considered “protected”. The public profile and anything users post would remain accessible.
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Source : BuzzFeed
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