For a number of years now TikTok has been viewed as a data security threat as a result of its parent company ByteDance, which is based out of China and is alleged to have ties to that government.
The latest development in this ongoing saga sees the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) taking aim at TikTok. To that end its commissioner, Brendan Carr, recently tweeted out that the social media platform has unauthorised access to user data.
Carr also called on the likes of Apple, Google and Facebook to bar access to the platform from app stores and other digital marketplaces in a bid to limit access to US user data, which he notes as being readily accessible to Beijing-based TikTok employees.
TikTok is not just another video app.
That’s the sheep’s clothing.It harvests swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing.
I’ve called on @Apple & @Google to remove TikTok from their app stores for its pattern of surreptitious data practices. pic.twitter.com/Le01fBpNjn
— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) June 28, 2022
“It is clear that TikTok poses an unacceptable national security risk due its extensive data harvesting being combined with Beijing’s apparently unchecked access to that sensitive data.” Carr added in a letter attached to the above tweet.
While not officially confirmed by TikTok itself, it is reported that employees based in China have on several occasions accessed sensitive US user data with consent or permission, with it noted in September of last year by a member of the company’s Trust and Safety department that, “everything is seen in China.”
This would be a flagrant violation of policy and privacy, which is made all the more concerning after TikTok partnered with Oracle to migrate 100 percent of its US data traffic to a new US-based cloud infrastructure.
While TikTok and ByteDance are yet to officially comment on the assertions made by Carr, it looks like the FCC Commissioner is eyeing action from big tech companies too. To that end he has given Google and Apple until 8th July to explain why both apps are still accessible on their respective online marketplaces given the security threat he says TikTok poses.
Precisely what action both US firms could face is unclear for now, especially as Carr is the only FCC Commissioner to make these assertions.
Given the continued popularity of TikTok despite being in violation of internet protections like COPPA, it will be interesting to see whether anything at all will come from this latest development.
