Chinese company admits it used TikTok data to track journalists

TikTok has made great efforts to convince key customers and market governments like the United States that privacy of user data is protected and that it poses no threat to national security.

But the mother company ByteDance told AFP on Friday that some employees had access to the two journalists' data as part of an internal investigation into the company's media leaks.

They had hoped to identify links between staff and a Financial Times journalist and a former BuzzFeed reporter, Eric Andersen, seen by the AFP, told in an email.

Both journalists reported earlier on the content of the company's leaked materials.

None of the employees who were found involved remained employed by ByteDance, Andersen said, although he did not know how many were laid off.

In a statement to AFP, ByteDance said it condemns the wrong “initiative that severely violated the Company's Code of Conduct”.

The workers had received the IP journalists' addresses in an effort to determine whether they were at the same location as ByteDance colleagues suspected of revealing confidential information.

The plan failed, however, partly because IP addresses only discovered rough location data.

TikTok is back in the spotlight in the United States, where Congress is ready to pass a nationwide ban on using an extremely popular short video app on government equipment because of perceived safety risks.

The House of Representatives could adopt a law this week banning TikTok's use on professional phones of civil servants, a move that would follow bans in about 20 US states.

TikTok has sought to convince US authorities that US data is protected and stored on servers located there.

But after media reports, she also acknowledged that China-based employees had access to American users' data, although the company insisted it was in strict and very limited circumstances. / REL