ByteDance, owner of TikTok, acknowledges that employees accessed information from journalists in the app

ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, has acknowledged that four employees have accessed the personal data of two journalists and other users within the video platform. The goal was to find the source of some leaks about the company.

“TikTok’s parent company ByteDance said on Thursday [22 de diciembre] what had fired four employees after an internal investigation found they had accessed data from two journalists and other US users while trying to track down a company leaka revelation that could further raise doubts in Washington about the company’s Chinese roots.”, reports The Washington Post.

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Even the IP addresses of the journalists were among the personal data they accessed. “ANDIn an attempt to identify who had shared internal documents with journalists from BuzzFeed News and the Financial Times, workers on a ByteDance internal audit team (two in China, two in the US) also extracted the reporters’ IP addresses and other data, such as people they had connected with via TikTokthe investigation found”, he adds.

Despite breaking the code of conduct, the employees did not achieve their goal. “The workers tried to use IP addresses (numbered codes assigned to each Internet-connected device that can give a rough estimate of a person’s location) to see if the journalists and their associates had been in contact with ByteDance employees, the investigation found. The attempt did not identify the source of the leaks”, states the newspaper.

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Liang Rubo, CEO of ByteDance, assured his workers through an email that he was “deeply disappointed” by the situation. “The public trust that we have invested great effort in building will be significantly undermined by the misconduct of some people. Regardless of cause or outcome, this misguided investigation seriously violated the company’s code of conduct, and the same company condemns it. We simply cannot take integrity risks that damage the trust of our users, employees and stakeholders.”, he indicated.

The revelation comes amid the controversy over the treatment of personal data of users on the video platform. “The findings are likely to intensify tensions over TikTok, one of the world’s most popular apps, as it its corporate owners are scrambling to persuade the US government that its Chinese ownership does not pose a threat to data privacy or surveillance”, assures the North American media.

Source: Elcomercio

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