TikTok's Leaked Audio from its Meetings Reveal that China has Access to US User Data

Sophie Webster, Tech Times 17 June 2022, 08:06 pm

On June 17, leaked recordings from internal meetings held by TikTok's parent company circulated online, and it may have just confirmed what the US government has been suspecting all along.

TikTok May Be Snooping on Users

According to New York Post, the leaked recordings revealed that ByteDance, a China-based company that owns TikTok, has accessed data connected to US users. This raised privacy concerns among users of the social media app.

The audio clips were from a couple of meetings of nine TikTok employees who can be heard saying that ByteDance engineers in China could easily access nonpublic US user data.

The recordings also confirmed that Chinese employees accessed information from September 2021 through January.

In a separate meeting, a member of the social media app's Trust and Safety department said that "everything is seen in China."

Also Read: [UPDATE] TikTok Uses This Android's Security Flaw to Track Mac Addresses

The recordings were made at TikTok meetings, both closed-door ones between company executives to all-hands presentations. It suggests that TikTok did not anticipate just how extensive China's access to its database is, according to DailyMail.

TikTok is currently the most popular social media platform, especially among children and teenagers. It currently has more than 1 billion active users worldwide.

TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said in a statement that they are aware of the scrutiny that they are facing in regards to security, and their goal is to remove any doubt about the security of their user data on the platform.

Shanahan added that they hire experts that continually work to validate the company's security standards.

Moving US Traffic to Oracle

Amid the report about China's access to US user data via TikTok, the social media company said that it is moving the user data of its users in the United States to Oracle servers, according to TechCrunch.

The recordings from TikTok's internal meetings revealed that US employees of the company consulted with their colleagues in China to know how US user data flowed because they do not have permission to access the data on their own. This means that everything is being controlled by China.

For years now, US officials have expressed concern that TikTok allows China's government to access the company's user data to collect information from Americans and other users worldwide.

The matter was again brought up in 2020, when former US President Donald Trump said that it would ban TikTok and WeChat, both of which are Chinese-owned, in the US.

However, that did not happen, as his announcement received backlash from the public. The only country in 2020 that was able to successfully ban Chinese-owned apps is India, which also cited national security concerns are the reason behind its decision.

TikTok, and its parent firm ByteDance, has publicly stated that it would "never hand over US users' data." The company also worked with Oracle and Microsoft to sell the US unit and even explored the possibility of selling stakes to the country's investors just to comply with Trump's order at the time.

But when the Biden administration came it, that was put into a halt.

Now, the social media company confirmed that it will be routing all of its US user traffic to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in the United States. This is to ensure that the data is safe and the privacy of TikTok users are protected.