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TikTok parent company ByteDance revealed that several employees accessed the TikTok data of two journalists to investigate leaks of company information to the media.
The employees of ByteDance, the China-based company that owns TikTok and its Chinese counterpart Douyin, accessed data from TikTok to track a Financial Times reporter and a former BuzzFeed reporter in a bid to identify the source of leaks to the media.
ByteDance's general counsel Erich Andersen admitted this in an email seen by Agence France Presse (AFP) on December 23, 2022. According to Andersen, the employees had obtained the IP addresses of the journalists in a bid to determine whether they were in the same location as ByteDance colleagues suspected of disclosing confidential information.
However, the plan failed partly because the IP addresses only revealed approximate location data.
Andersen added that ByteDance condemned the "misguided initiative that seriously violated the company's code of conduct" and the employees involved have been fired by the company, including two in China and two in the United States.
TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew said in a separate email to employees that such “misconduct is not at all representative of what I know our company’s principles to be.” He added that the company “will continue to enhance these access protocols, which have already been significantly improved and hardened since this initiative took place.”
This comes after TikTok had gone to great lengths to convince customers and governments of major markets like the United States that users' data privacy is protected and that it poses no threat to national security.
TikTok is going to be banned from most U.S. government devices under a spending bill Congress unveiled early Tuesday, the latest push by American lawmakers against the Chinese-owned social media app.
