China ‘routinely views’ Tiktok users’ data

Popular app’s promise to keep user files private falls flat as Beijing employees say ‘everything is seen’

Tiktok users’ private data are routinely accessed by employees in China despite the video app’s promises to store data outside the country, an investigation has found. Staff at Bytedance, the video app’s Chinese owner, are able to see non-public data about users such as their birthdays and phone numbers, according to staff recordings. One employee claimed “everything is seen in China”, adding to concerns the data could be used by Beijing against Western citizens.

TIKTOK users’ private information is routinely accessed by employees in China despite the video app’s promises to store data outside the country, an investigation has found.

Staff at Bytedance, the app’s Chinese owner, can see private data about users such as their birthdays and phone numbers, according to staff recordings obtained by news website Buzzfeed.

One employee said that “everything is seen in China”, adding to concerns that the app could be used by Beijing to gather data on Western citizens.

Tiktok, best known for short videos recommended to users through an addictive algorithm, is used by more than 15million adults in Britain who spend an average of almost 30 minutes a day on the app.

The company has said it has never handed data to the Chinese government and that data for users in the UK, Europe and US are stored on computer servers in the US and Singapore.

However, the investigation found that there is little to stop this data from being accessed by employees in China.

The company is negotiating an agreement with US authorities to protect American users’ data in which Oracle, a US company, would store files at a facility in Texas. Tiktok said last night that all of its US users’ traffic is now sent to Oracle data centres. However, it continues to be backed up on the company’s own servers, and is still establishing which staff will be able to access it.

This year, the company signed a deal to build a data centre in Dublin and said it would “minimise data transfers” outside Europe. The facility is not expected to open until next year.

Recordings of staff meetings leaked to Buzzfeed showed that engineers in China were able to access user data as recently as January of this year.

One employee in Beijing was described as a “master admin” who has “access to everything”. Another said: “I feel like with these tools, there’s some backdoor to access user data in almost all of them.”

Tiktok had previously told US senators that a “world-renowned, Us-based security team” decides who accesses data on users.

The video platform has experienced a surge in popularity, becoming one of the world’s best known smartphone apps, but its rise has been marred by concerns about its Chinese ownership.

Indian authorities have banned Tiktok and Donald Trump attempted to force it to sell its US business before losing the 2020 election.

Tiktok had been expected to announce that its non-us headquarters would be based in London, but reportedly backed out of the plan in 2020 amid growing tensions between the UK and

‘We know we are among the most scrutinised platforms... we aim to remove any doubt about the security of data’

China. Conservative MPS had called for it to store British users’ data in the UK as part of the plans.

Tiktok said: “We know we are among the most scrutinised platforms from a security standpoint, and we aim to remove any doubt about the security of US user data.”

It did not respond to a request for comment on whether British users’ data could be accessed from China.