TikTok in the US crosshairs What’s going on?
A few weeks ago we told you how the state of Montana in the United States was the first to veto the TikTok application. The crossfire between the United States and China continues and affects many of the main applications that we use in our daily lives. It should be remembered that, conversely, many US apps are banned in China. Google, WhatsApp or Instagram are just a few examples.
Now TikTok is once again under the US spotlight, as Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn accuse the company of misleading Congress regarding the storage and sharing of user data. In a letter dated 6 June, the lawmakers demand answers to a series of questions related to TikTok’s data practices, highlighting concerns about the storage of sensitive information and the involvement of China-based servers.
The allegations raise questions about user privacy, national security and the company’s transparency. Senators Blumenthal and Blackburn expressed concern about TikTok’s repeated misleading or inaccurate responses regarding user security and national security.
They referred to a New York Times report that claims user data was shared within TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, through an internal messaging platform called Lark. The report further claims that all user data on Lark was accessible to ByteDance employees, including those located in China.
Forbes has also published an article accusing TikTok of storing US TikTok creators’ financial information, including tax information and national insurance numbers, in China. The senators point out that TikTok’s CEO and employees had previously testified that user data is stored in the United States and Singapore.
The Senators submitted a list of 14 questions that they demanded TikTok answer by 16 June. These questions cover a wide range of topics, including the storage of user data on Chinese servers, access granted to China-based employees, clarification of previous testimony, TikTok’s involvement in other ByteDance products, and steps taken to investigate data sharing with Chinese authorities.
The allegations against TikTok emphasise the importance of accountability in the handling of user data. Users trust platforms with much of their personal information these days, including debit/credit card numbers and, above all, passwords, and it is crucial that companies are very transparent about their data practices.
As an example of this, META was recently fined 1.2 billion euros by the EU for transferring data to the US. This is the largest data protection fine in the history of the European Union.