The wildly popular social media platform TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance. US officials have long warned of the potential of a national security threat considering that ByteDance has plans to access US user location data through TikTok, according to Wired.  

However, Tiktok is firewalled between ByteDance and its US-based users. Still, there are indications that an internal ByteDance review board, the Internal Audit and Risk Control department, had plans to direct TikTok to track the location of specific US users. 

There were also two cases in which the Internal Audit team planned to gather TikTok data about the location of a US citizen who had never had an employment relationship with the company. 

Getting Real With TikTok Risks

Last month, US lawmakers and regulators reheated their claims about the platform, and now, the Biden administration is said to be preparing to take action. 

It is also important to note that the threat of a national security threat has been around for years when former president Donald Trump warned that the Chinese government could use TikTok to collect data on US residents or launch influence operations via the platform. 

In fact, even the US Military banned its members from using the platform across all government devices in late 2019 and early 2020. The Transportation Security Administration and other federal agencies did the same thing as well. 

A Buzzfeed News report in June, it stated that ByteDance employees could gain access to US TikTok users' data in some situations. 

It is still unclear why TikTok has been singled out, considering that a lot of sensitive data about those living in the US are already available in various forms online. In fact, even before the rise of TikTok, China was already known to steal huge quantities of data about Americans and others from companies and governments around the world. 

Also read: Why TikTok is a Threat to Google? Here's the Alarming Part About Search Results

The Biden Administration's Move

According to Semafor, the Biden administration is preparing a series of executive orders to address TikTok and the tech sector of China regarding their access to US data more broadly. It's likely that such actions could impact US investment in China and also limit what technology can be sold to the Chinese. 

The Biden administration's actions are likely to draw more attention to China's growing use of technology to counter US dominance. US soldiers, diplomats, and intelligence agents have increasingly warned that the Chinese government wants to use its tech firms to damage, even to the point of destroying, the US economy. 

Related article: TikTok Is Becoming A MAJOR Hub Of FAKE Videos About The Ukraine Crisis

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Written by April Fowell