TikTok Admits Chinese Employees Can Access Private Data of Users in UK, Europe

TikTok has revealed that its employees in China have access to the private data of accounts based in the UK and the European Union.

BBC News reports that TikTok recently revealed to users that employees in China had access to account data from the UK and EU. The social media firm said that its “privacy policy” was “based on a demonstrated need to do their job.”

Concerns over whether data may be provided to the Chinese government have prompted authorities around the world, including the UK and the U.S., to examine the app. This week, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr called for TikTok to be banned in America.

According to Elaine Fox, TikTok’s privacy lead for Europe, a global team helped keep user experiences “consistent, enjoyable, and safe.” Fox further noted that although TikTok stores European user data in the U.S. and Singapore, “we allow certain employees within our corporate group located in Brazil, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States remote access to TikTok European user data.”

Fox added: “Our efforts are centered on limiting the number of employees with access to European user data, minimizing data flows outside of the region, and storing European user data locally.”

She further said that this approach was “subject to a series of robust security controls and approval protocols, and by way of methods that are recognised under the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).”

Brendan Carr, a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), called for TikTok to be banned in America earlier this week, stating: “I don’t believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban.”

Carr added that there was not “a world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient confidence that it’s not finding its way back into the hands of the [Chinese Communist Party].”

Read more at BBC News here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan