Employees of the Chinese company TikTok had access to the platform’s data to track journalists in order to identify the sources behind information leaks to the media, the company admitted on Friday. ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, told AFP on Friday that several employees had access to the data of two journalists writing about the company.
They hoped to identify links between the staff and a journalist from the financial times as well as a former BuzzFeed reporter, according to an email from ByteDance general counsel Erich Andersen seen by AFP. The two journalists covered matters related to this company through confidentially obtained information.
IP Address Tracking
The employees identified by Bytedance who were in contact with these journalists no longer work for the company, Andersen said, without elaborating on the total number of employees in this case.
In a statement to AFP, ByteDance condemned this “unfortunate initiative that seriously violated the company’s code of conduct.” The IP addresses of the journalists were obtained to determine if they were in the same location as ByteDance colleagues suspected of leaking confidential information, an internal report broadcast by Erich Andersen showed.
This information undermines the image that TikTok strives to convey to customers and governments: that of a platform concerned about the protection of its users’ data, and respectful of national security. However, the platform is being targeted by US elected officials who want to ban it from the country.
Because TikTok’s critics are concerned that this data is accessible to the platform’s parent company, the Chinese group ByteDance, subject to the control of the Chinese Communist Party. In recent weeks, TikTok has also acknowledged that the data of Western users (including French ones) is likely to be accessible from China.
Source: BFM TV
