A China-based team from TikTok’s parent company apparently planned to use the app to track the personal location of certain American citizens, further raising security concerns about the company’s relationship with China.
ByteDance’s Internal Audit and Risk Control team had the ability to track a user’s personal location through the TikTok app itself, according to documents reviewed by Forbes. While the team primarily dealt with misconduct by current and former employees, it tracked the location of at least two people who had no connection to ByteDance.
TikTok claimed that the information was to be used to “help show relevant content and ads to users, comply with applicable laws, and detect and prevent fraud and inauthentic behavior,” but the documents indicated that the internal audit team intended to use the data to surveil select U.S. residents.
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The Internal Audit and Risk Control team typically runs regular audits of employees to determine if there are any conflicts of interest or misuse of resources. They have also done so at the behest of senior executives, including TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew.
This team, based out of China, has done so in relation to employees in the United States.
“Like most companies our size, we have an internal audit function responsible for objectively auditing and evaluating the company and our employees’ adherence to our codes of conduct,” a ByteDance spokesperson told Forbes. “This team provides its recommendations to the leadership team.”
The White House and ByteDance are reportedly close to signing a deal with the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States in an attempt to ensure the company’s Chinese owners cannot access U.S. user data. The company gained the attention of lawmakers in the summer after a Buzzfeed News report revealed that Chinese employees could access U.S. user data from overseas. While TikTok claims that it has never shared U.S. user data with Chinese officials, some experts and officials have voiced concerns about China using its national security laws to force the company to provide such data.
This led to TikTok transferring all U.S. data to servers hosted by Oracle in Texas and overseen by the CFIUS.
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TikTok has also begun expanding its market presence in the U.S. The company is looking to expand into America’s e-commerce market, including the formation of TikTok-operated warehouses.
