To find out which employees were giving information about the company to the press, TikTok had decided to use drastic measures. Or rather to inquire into the personal data at your disposal. In testimony given to the English BBC, the journalist from financial times Cristina Criddle indicates that she received a call from the Chinese social network informing her that several of its employees, in China and the United States, had analyzed her personal data, particularly her geolocation.
Except that Cristina Criddle does not have her own TikTok account with her name, but one with the image of her cat. The account, with a hundred subscribers, only lists videos of her cat and no videos of the journalist.
Registered IP addresses
The employees identified by Bytedance (TikTok’s parent company) as the origin of this breach of personal data would have acted as part of an internal audit, in order to find the employees who speak to the press. The objective was then to compare the registered IP addresses of Cristina Criddle and those of the employees to find out who had been able to meet the journalist. Objective not met since at the end of the investigation no “culprit” could be found.
TikTok and Bytedance apologized to the reporter, saying it would “never happen again.” Already last December, several journalists, including one also from financial timesIt had been spied on by employees of the Chinese social network, always with the same desire to identify sources.
This new case still risks damaging the image of TikTok, which for several months has wanted to get rid of its bad reputation in terms of respect for personal data. Accused of espionage by many institutions, such as in France or the United States, the application worries above all because of its scale throughout the world. TikTok claims more than 1 billion active monthly users around the world, including 150 million in Europe and more than 20 million in France.
Source: BFM TV
