An internal investigation by ByteDance, the parent company of video-sharing platform TikTok, found that employees tracked multiple journalists covering the company, improperly gaining access to their IP addresses and user data in an attempt to identify whether they had been in the same locales as ByteDance employees.
TikTok repeatedly declined to commit to US lawmakers on Wednesday that the short-form video app will cut off flows of US user data to China, instead promising that the outcome of its negotiations with the US government “will satisfy all national security concerns.”
In videos splashed across the internet, Andrew Tate, a onetime kickboxing champion turned self-styled men’s-help guru, has argued that women are the property of their husbands and should “have kids, sit at home, be quiet and make coffee.”
TikTok confirmed that China-based employees of its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, have access to US user data under certain circumstances in a letter obtained by The New York Times responding to nine Republican senators' inquiries about the matter.
TikTok can circumvent security protections on Apple and Google app stores and uses device tracking that gives TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company ByteDance full access to user data, according to the summaries of two major studies obtained by TheWrap that appear to confirm longstanding concerns raised by privacy experts about the popular video-sharing app.
