ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, admitted that four employees accessed the private information of some userss, according to The Wall Street Journal. Specifically, that of two American journalists involved in the investigation of a leak of data from the social network. According to the Chinese company, the workers They have already been identified and fired. immediately.
The discovery was thanks to ByteDance itself ordering an internal audit. Employees, taking advantage of the large amount of data that TikTok collects, accessed the IP address of the journalists to track their location. Their goal was to identify if they had met with other ByteDance employees to receive confidential documents.
This investigation of its own originated after a report from Forbes accused ByteDance of spying on several of its journalists. However, it is important to mention that the company only acknowledges having found improper access to the data of employees of BuzzFeed and of the Financial Times.
The matter is so serious that Rubo Liang, director of ByteDance, was in charge of communicating the news to the entire company. “The individuals involved abused their authority to gain access to TikTok user data”he commented via an internal email obtained by Bloombergand I add:
“Public trust, which we have invested great effort in building, will be significantly undermined by the misconduct of some individuals. No matter what the cause or result, this misguided investigation seriously violated the company’s code of conduct. , and the company condemns it. We simply cannot take integrity risks that undermine the trust of our users, employees and stakeholders.”
Of course, at ByteDance they are aware that this can have very serious legal consequences for TikTok. Especially because of the doubts that continue to be generated in the United States due to the treatment of users’ private data.
Let us not forget that, during the Donald Trump administration, TikTok was about to be forced to leave the United States. The government believed that China could spy on US citizens through TikTok. While Joe Biden changed that view slightly and scrapped a ban, he did direct that relevant agencies make sure that TikTok actually protects and properly manages its community’s personal information.
After an in-depth investigation that took place in mid-2021, the United States did not find sufficient evidence to affirm that TikTok represents a threat to national security. Of course, they prohibited the use of TikTok among government officials.
What’s next with TikTok now?
Firing employees is not the only measure. Also they will restructure their internal audit team to prevent a similar situation from happening again. They will form a council whose role will be to propose and establish regulations that allow ByteDance employees to be investigated if necessary.
Regarding the changes at a technical level, TikTok cut off access points to its users’ private information. This movement, supposedly, was made for months in order to safeguard the data.
“We must continue to prioritize these efforts and not let the malicious acts of a few people ruin the work of tens of thousands,” TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said in another email. The manager also commented that the protocols for access to information will continue to be improved and that the data migration from US users to servers located in the US country. That is, they will not be stored in China, thus complying with an order by the US government.