| TikTok was used by its parent company ByteDance to reveal location information in order to correlate the accounts of journalists and former employees. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/22/tiktok-by... > TikTok has admitted that it used its own app to spy on reporters as part of an attempt to track down the journalists’ sources, according to an internal email. > The data was accessed by employees of ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company and was used to track the reporters’ physical movements. The company’s chief internal auditor Chris Lepitak, who led the team involved in the operation, has been fired, while his China-based manager Song Ye has resigned. > They looked at IP addresses of journalists who were using the TikTok app in an attempt to learn if they were in the same location as employees suspected of leaking confidential information. The effort, which targeted former BuzzFeed reporter Emily Baker-White and Financial Times reporter Cristina Criddle among other reporters, was unsuccessful, but resulted in at least four members of staff based in both the US and China improperly accessing the data, according to an email from ByteDance general counsel Erich Andersen. All four have been fired. Company officials said they were taking additional steps to protect user data. --- The corresponding part is that the CCP has a stake in ByteDance and control over a board seat. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/tiktok-ban-b... |