Leaked Audio from TikTok Meetings Reveal China Freely Grabbing User Data: ‘Everything Is Seen in China’
TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images)
China repeatedly accessed user data from the social media app TikTok, despite the company previously assuring lawmakers they work diligently to safeguard U.S. user data from China, where the app’s parent company, ByteDance, is located.
Donald Trump threatened to outright ban the app, citing security concerns when he was president, and Buzzfeed is now reporting that multiple leaked audio recordings from meetings at TikTok reveal China was grabbing user data from at least September 2021 to January 2022.
“Everything is seen in China,” a member of TikTok’s Trust and Safety Department said in a September meeting, according to Buzzfeed, which found 14 separate statements from nine employees suggesting engineers in China have been accessing user data. Employees were not identified by name in the report in order to protect their privacy.
The outlet also reported that one engineer was referred to as “Master Admin” in a September meeting, with a director at the company saying this engineer “has access to everything.”
An effort to restrict access to U.S. user data is referred to internally at TikTok at Project Texas, according to Buzzfeed, and consultants were brought in to help identify data flow problems. One consultant said in September 2021 that there seemed to be “backdoor” access to user data built into almost every algorithm.
“I feel like with these tools, there’s some backdoor to access user data in almost all of them, which is exhausting,” the consultant said. A spokesperson from the consulting firm, however, called this statement “inaccurate.”
TikTok responded to the report with a Friday statement claiming that all U.S. user data is now being routed to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. This means the private data of users is now stored within the U.S., presumably without the same access for China engineers that Buzzfeed report suggests has been the case for some time now.
The company said:
We’re also making operational changes in line with this work – including the new department we recently established, with U.S.-based leadership, to solely manage US user data for TikTok. Together, these changes will enforce additional employee protections, provide more safeguards, and further minimize data transfer outside of the U.S.
