According to Bloomberg, data security activities on the Tiktok platform of China-based ByteDance Group continue to be embroiled in controversy from US authorities.
In 2020, former US President Donald Trump asked ByteDance to sell TikTok if it still wanted to release the app in the US.
Mr. Trump said that Tiktok is a "national security risk" in the US and tried to limit this platform, however, this ban was lifted by President Joe Biden in June 2021.
In addition, according to a recent report by BuzzFeed News, a senior Republican Party member: leaked audio from 80 internal TikTok meetings shows that employees of ByteDance ( TikTok's parent company) headquartered in China have accessed the personal information of Americans.
Moreover, according to the New York Times, TikTok is still being monitored by CFIUS. At the end of June, Congressman Brendan Carr, a member of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), submitted a petition to Apple and Google to remove TikTok from the app store, after comparing the social media platform to a werebacked wereft.
In a letter to nine US lawmakers, Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok, admitted that employees at the company's headquarters in China can access some of the information of US service users, including videos and public comments.
Chew also affirmed that the information was not shared with the Chinese government. Access takes place in a strictly controlled cybersecurity environment, using a authentication protocol monitored by TikTok's security team in the US.
In the letter, Chew also said that TikTok has limited its linkages with ByteDance and that the data that employees can access is inherently insensitive, and this sharing helps ensure global interactivity. This has led to a lot of criticism from US lawmakers about TikTok's ways of sharing data.
Tick's response affirms that our fear of influence within the company is well-founded. The company was supposed to be clean from the beginning, but they tried to hide their work. The American people need to know that if they are using TikTok, China can have their information," said Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn.
Also in this letter, Chew said that TikTok is working with the US government to enhance data security, in line with the definition of the Committee for Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), a group of government agencies that focus on reviewing foreign acquisitions of US companies.
TikTok's plan, also known as the "Taxas Project," to store information of US users on domestic servers, is operated by Oracle Software.
TikTok also converted its cloud platform from China to Oracle's infrastructure, meaning data and content algorithms for US users will be accessed and deployed from domestic servers.
"We do not disclose the plan publicly because we respect our confidentiality commitment to the US government. However, the current situation forces us to publish some information to clarify the incorrect and misleading details in the article (of BuzzFeed)", Chew said.
Currently, 100% of US traffic is to Oracle Corp, but that data is backed up to the company's own data centers in the US and Singapore.
TikTok plans to move all of its data to Oracle's servers in the US in the future and remove them from its own system.
After moving the server to the US, TikTok employees in China will still take on the role of algorithm development, however, algorithm training will take place on the Oracle server.
According to SensorTower, a dating app company, TikTok has been downloaded 321.6 million times in the US.
