MPs’ fears over Beijing data grab as it tightens its grip on TikTok

TORY MPs have raised renewed fears about the Chinese government’s access to personal data after it tightened its grip on the owner of TikTok, the video-sharing social network with hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

The privacy concerns were raised after billionaire investor George Soros revealed Beijing had taken a stake and gained a board seat at a key subsidiary of TikTok’s ultimate owner Byte Dance.

Mr Soros warned that it ‘gives Beijing first-hand access to the inner workings of a company that holds one of the world’s largest troves of personal data’.

The move by China comes amid growing concerns that the app is used by Beijing to spy on users – something which TikTok denies.

The company says that it collects less data than Google or Facebook and is ‘committed to protecting the privacy and safety of the TikTok community’.

Last year TikTok was the world’s most downloaded app: each month its 732million active users spent as much time on it as there has been since the Stone Age – 2.8billion hours, or nearly 320,000 years.

In July it became the first app not owned by Facebook to cross the 3billion download mark, with Byte Dance now turning over nearly £30billion a year in revenue.

Last week The Mail on Sunday revealed Government concerns about the sinister surveillance tactics employed by the Chinese fashion brand Shein, including spying on unsuspecting customers by using social media sites and apps – TikTok in particular – collecting data on what its customers view and like, and then instructing its factories to churn out copies at a lower cost than its competitors, including British fashion producers.

Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, the chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, warned yesterday about the growing might of China’s ‘surveillance state’.

Mr Tugendhat said: ‘The US stopped the sale of Grindr to a Chinese firm because they were rightly concerned at the risk to the privacy of Americans.

‘TikTok tracks the dreams of many more and its data is now heading towards a security state that keeps its own citizens on an electronic leash. It could now try the same with our citizens.’