Tuesday, the two top senators on the intelligence panel urged the Federal Trade Commission to look into TikTok and its parent company’s handling of user data. Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the committee’s chairman and vice-chairman, wrote to FTC Chair Lina Khan referencing recent press allegations that TikTok’s parent firm, China-based ByteDance, has been accessing data on U.S. users, in violation of multiple public representations,” according to the business.
The senators wrote: “We ask that your agency immediately initiate [an] investigation based on apparent deception by TikTok, and coordinate this work with any national security or counterintelligence investigation that may be initiated by the U.S. Department of Justice.” Furthermore, according to these most recent reports, TikTok may have misrepresented its corporate governance processes.
Last month, Buzzfeed News revealed that Chinese authorities had regularly accessed data belonging to American users. This raised security fears that the Chinese government would utilize backdoor techniques to gain access to sensitive personal data. TikTok criticized the report as being false. TikTok announced on Tuesday that it restricts access to data about American users across regions, including China.
Michael Beckerman, vice president and director of public policy, Americas at TikTok, stated in a statement that that access is subject to a variety of sophisticated controls, safeguards such as encryption for some data, and authorized approval methods reviewed by our U.S.-based leadership/security team. To offer users, even more, peace of mind, TikTok claimed last month that it has migrated data on American users to Oracle Corp. servers. That did not, however, relieve the senators’ worries.
Although TikTok has claimed that switching from a U.S. cloud service provider to U.S.-based storage eliminates any possibility of illegal access, these most recent facts raise questions about the veracity of TikTok’s claims, they said. They told Khan of the FTC, “We urge you to act immediately on this matter in light of repeated misrepresentations by TikTok regarding its data security, data processing, and corporate governance standards.” Since there have been problems with TikTok’s data security, the Trump administration ordered ByteDance to divest TikTok in 2020. However, this policy was never changed after the election.
Brendon Carr, a Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission, requested last week that Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc. remove TikTok from their app stores because it posed a threat to national security. He based this request on the information in the Buzzfeed piece.
About TikTok
The Chinese corporation ByteDance owns the short-form video hosting service TikTok, also known as Douyin in China. It features a wide range of short-form user videos, with lengths ranging from 15 seconds to ten minutes, in genres such as pranks, stunts, tricks, jokes, dancing, and entertainment. The Chinese market first saw the launch of Douyin in September 2016, while TikTok is the app’s worldwide counterpart. Most areas outside of mainland China saw the release of TikTok for iOS and Android in 2017. However, the app didn’t go global until 2 August 2018, when it merged with Musical.ly, another Chinese social media site.
Although TikTok and Douyin’s user interfaces are nearly identical, they do not share content. Each of their servers is located in the region where the relevant app is sold. Although the two products’ features differ, they are similar. In-video searching for other videos of a person is possible on Douyin, along with other functions like purchasing, making lodging reservations, and writing geo-tagged reviews. Since their debut in 2016, TikTok and Douyin have quickly become well-known in almost every country. In October 2020, TikTok was downloaded to more than 2 billion mobile devices worldwide.
After Zoom and Peacock, Morning Consult selected TikTok as the third fastest-growing brand for 2020. TikTok surpassed Google to be named the most popular website of 2021 by Cloudflare.
Featured Image: Megapixl @ Josefkubes
