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https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilyb...tedance-surveillance-american-user-data/

TikTok Parent ByteDance Planned To Use TikTok To Monitor The Physical Location Of Specific American Citizens

The project, assigned to a Beijing-led team, would have involved accessing location data from some U.S. users’ devices without their knowledge or consent.
AChina-based team at TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, planned to use the TikTok app to monitor the personal location of some specific American citizens, according to materials reviewed by Forbes.

The team behind the monitoring project — ByteDance’s Internal Audit and Risk Control department — is led by Beijing-based executive Song Ye, who reports to ByteDance cofounder and CEO Rubo Liang.

The team primarily conducts investigations into potential misconduct by current and former ByteDance employees. But in at least two cases, the Internal Audit team also planned to collect TikTok data about the location of a U.S. citizen who had never had an employment relationship with the company, the materials show. It is unclear from the materials whether data about these Americans was actually collected; however, the plan was for a Beijing-based ByteDance team to obtain location data from U.S. users’ devices.

TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said that TikTok collects approximate location information based on users’ IP addresses to “among other things, help show relevant content and ads to users, comply with applicable laws, and detect and prevent fraud and inauthentic behavior."

But the material reviewed by Forbes indicates that ByteDance's Internal Audit team was planning to use this location information to surveil individual American citizens, not to target ads or any of these other purposes. Forbes is not disclosing the nature and purpose of the planned surveillance referenced in the materials in order to protect sources. TikTok and ByteDance did not answer questions about whether Internal Audit has specifically targeted any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists.

TikTok is reportedly close to signing a contract with the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which evaluates the national security risks posed by companies of foreign ownership, and has been investigating whether the company’s Chinese ownership could enable the Chinese government to access personal information about U.S. TikTok users. (Disclosure: In a past life, I held policy positions at Facebook and Spotify.)

In September, President Biden signed an executive order enumerating specific risks that CFIUS should consider when assessing companies of foreign ownership. The order, which states that it intends to “emphasize . . . the risks presented by foreign adversaries’ access to data of United States persons,” focuses specifically on foreign companies’ potential use of data “for the surveillance, tracing, tracking, and targeting of individuals or groups of individuals, with potential adverse impacts on national security.”

The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The Internal Audit and Risk Control team runs regular audits and investigations of TikTok and ByteDance employees, for infractions like conflicts of interest and misuse of company resources, and also for leaks of confidential information. Internal materials reviewed by Forbes show that senior executives, including TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, have ordered the team to investigate individual employees, and that it has investigated employees even after they left the company.

The internal audit team uses a data request system known to employees as the “green channel,” according to documents and records from Lark, ByteDance’s internal office management software. These documents and records show that “green channel” requests for information about U.S. employees have pulled that data from mainland China.

TikTok and ByteDance did not answer questions about whether Internal Audit has specifically targeted any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists.

“Like most companies our size, we have an internal audit function responsible for objectively auditing and evaluating the company and our employees' adherence to our codes of conduct,” said ByteDance spokesperson Jennifer Banks in a statement. “This team provides its recommendations to the leadership team."

ByteDance is not the first tech giant to have considered using an app to monitor specific U.S. users. In 2017, the New York Times reported that Uber had identified various local politicians and regulators and served them a separate, misleading version of the Uber app to avoid regulatory penalties. At the time, Uber acknowledged that it had run the program, called “greyball,” but said it was used to deny ride requests to “opponents who collude with officials on secret ‘stings’ meant to entrap drivers,” among other groups.

TikTok did not respond to questions about whether it has ever served different content or experiences to government officials, regulators, activists or journalists than the general public in the TikTok app.

Both Uber and Facebook also reportedly tracked the location of journalists reporting on their apps. A 2015 investigation by the Electronic Privacy Information Center found that Uber had monitored the location of journalists covering the company. Uber did not specifically respond to this claim. The 2021 book An Ugly Truth alleges that Facebook did the same thing, in an effort to identify the journalists’ sources. Facebook did not respond directly to the assertions in the book, but a spokesperson told the San Jose Mercury News in 2018 that, like other companies, Facebook “routinely use[s] business records in workplace investigations.”

“It is impossible to keep data that should not be stored in CN from being retained in CN-based servers.”

But an important factor distinguishes ByteDance’s planned collection of private users’ information from those cases: TikTok recently told lawmakers that access to certain U.S. user data — likely including location — will be “limited only to authorized personnel, pursuant to protocols being developed with the U.S. Government.” TikTok and ByteDance did not answer questions about whether Internal Audit executive Song Ye or other members of the department are “authorized personnel” for the purposes of these protocols.

These promises are part of Project Texas, TikTok’s massive effort to rebuild its internal systems so that China-based employees will not be able to access a swath of “protected” identifying user data about U.S. TikTok users, including their phone numbers, birthdays and draft videos. This effort is central to the company’s national security negotiations with CFIUS.

At a Senate hearing in September, TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas said the forthcoming CFIUS contract would “satisfy all national security concerns” about the app. Still, some senators appeared skeptical. In July, the Senate Intelligence Committee began an investigation into whether TikTok misled lawmakers by withholding information about China-based employees’ access to U.S. data earlier this year, following a June report in BuzzFeed News showing that U.S. user data had been repeatedly accessed by ByteDance employees in China.

In a statement about TikTok’s data access controls, TikTok spokesperson Shanahan said that the company uses tools like encryption and “security monitoring” to keep data secure, access approval is overseen by U.S personnel, and that employees are granted access to U.S. data “on an as-needed basis.”


It is unclear what role ByteDance’s Internal Audit team will play in TikTok’s efforts to limit China-based employees’ access to U.S. user data, especially given the team’s plans to monitor some American citizens’ locations using the TikTok app. But a fraud risk assessment written by a member of the team in late 2021 highlighted data storage concerns, saying that according to employees responsible for the company’s data, “it is impossible to keep data that should not be stored in CN from being retained in CN-based servers, even after ByteDance stands up a primary storage cetner [sic] in Singapore. [Lark data is saved in China.]” (brackets in original).

Moreover, a leaked audio conversation from January 2022 shows that the Beijing-based team was, at that point, gathering additional information on Project Texas. In the call, a member of TikTok’s U.S. Trust & Safety team recounted an unusual conversation to his manager: The employee had been asked by Chris Lepitak, TikTok’s Chief Internal Auditor, to meet at an LA-area restaurant off hours. Lepitak, who reports to Beijing-based Song Ye, then asked the employee detailed questions about the location and details of the Oracle server that is central to TikTok’s plans to limit foreign access to personal U.S. user data. The employee told his manager that he was “freaked out” by the exchange. TikTok and ByteDance did not respond to questions about this conversation.

Oracle spokesperson Ken Glueck said that while TikTok does currently use Oracle’s cloud services, “we have absolutely no insight one way or the other” into who can access TikTok user data. “Today, TikTok is running in the Oracle cloud, but just like Bank of America, General Motors, and a million other customers, they have full control of everything they're doing,” he said.

This corroborates a January statement made by TikTok’s Head of Data Defense in another leaked audio call. In that call, the executive said to a colleague: “It’s almost incorrect to call it Oracle Cloud, because they’re just giving us bare metal, and then we're building our VMs [virtual machines] on top of it.”

Glueck made clear that this would change if and when TikTok finalizes its contract with the federal government. “But unless and until that’s the case,” he said, Oracle is not providing anything “other than our own security” for TikTok.

TikTok did not answer questions from Forbes about the status of the company’s negotiations with CFIUS. But in a statement to Bloomberg published early this morning, TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said: “We are confident that we are on a path to fully satisfy all reasonable U.S. national security concerns.”

Richard Nieva contributed reporting.


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So that will be just one more entity on the list of entities already tracking your location.


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Pretty much the way I feel... and we all sign up for it without batting an eye.

Craziest thing I've ever seen -- and probably the watershed moment of "turning the corner" towards our doom -- people running around with their hair on fire (and a cell phone in their hand) insisting the vaccine had a tracking microchip. willynilly


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Originally Posted by FATE
Pretty much the way I feel... and we all sign up for it without batting an eye.

Craziest thing I've ever seen -- and probably the watershed moment of "turning the corner" towards our doom -- people running around with their hair on fire (and a cell phone in their hand) insisting the vaccine had a tracking microchip. willynilly

But what about all the tik tok dances and tik tok challenges and tik tok whatevers?

Call me old, but I never understood why tik tok was such a craze when people already belonged to multiple platforms that already did the same thing.


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Originally Posted by PitDAWG
So that will be just one more entity on the list of entities already tracking your location.


and the only one that shares with the Chinese government your physical location.


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Originally Posted by superbowldogg
Originally Posted by PitDAWG
So that will be just one more entity on the list of entities already tracking your location.


and the only one that shares with the Chinese government your physical location.

Ya think? lol.

I can't wait for the day when my biggest worry is wondering if China is stalking my hashtags.


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Originally Posted by FATE
Originally Posted by superbowldogg
Originally Posted by PitDAWG
So that will be just one more entity on the list of entities already tracking your location.


and the only one that shares with the Chinese government your physical location.

Ya think? lol.

I can't wait for the day when my biggest worry is wondering if China is stalking my hashtags.

Yes, I do and the amount of data the Chinese govt is collecting on Americans is beyond disturbing. Plus, the content they serve is much different than the content that is served in China.

...and you can solve multiple problems at once.


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Social Media combined with AI is a largely unrecognized danger to society. It is becoming very clear that the threat of AI is not one where a bunch of robots come to life and threaten mankind, rather, AI can use media to hack the human mind. It turns out, that humans are pretty easily influenced through social media that manages to keep them engaged and there are all sorts of tricks that can be used to keep users eyes on the screen. TikTok is notorious for using every trick in the book to keep users engaged. It even does things like apply beauty filters behind the scene to make peoples skin and facial features appear more attractive without telling users that they are doing this. It may seem like a sort of benign thing, but it is actually a trick that was discovered to significantly influence users choice of social platform and the degree to which they used that platform.

This is the reason many people are actually concerned about TikTok. It is not just data going to China. If China wants data on you, they can go purchase it from many companies. It is the ability to then use that data to change your mind without you realizing it that should be considered the real danger.

TikTok is recognized as a concern in many countries and is even blocked in China itself. They don't want their own youth exposed to the system.
In the U.S., both the Biden and Trump administrations have attempted to block TikTok in some way.

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Lol. So you’re worried about the Chinese following your every movement? Ahhh bless your heart. Two words. Opt out. Paranoid maga sheep crack me up.

This is just the first generation of meta data operations. It’s going to take at least another generation of meta data users to correct our adolescent use of it.

Last edited by PerfectSpiral; 10/26/22 09:59 AM. Reason: Added statement.

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Originally Posted by PerfectSpiral
Lol. So you’re worried about the Chinese following your every movement? Ahhh bless your heart. Two words. Opt out. Paranoid maga sheep crack me up.

This is just the first generation of meta data operations. It’s going to take at least another generation of meta data users to correct our adolescent use of it.



Im in the industry... What they are doing is wrong.

1. I'm definitely not Maga
2. I don't use TikTok because of their datacollection
3. Imagine military/hacking applications that this can be used against


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1. Maybe
2. Then you don’t have anything to worry about.
3. Paranoid much? Which military/tracking applications are you talking about?


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My question to you would be where is it you go or what is it you do that you're so worried China will find out? I mean why would they give a damn where you go and what you do?


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aren't there a bunch of apps that track locations, like snapchat and such?

seems like the data would be easy to obtain regardless of who has access to the information, or whether they own the app or not. especially since a lot of our data gets sold to third parties, as well as being used for the algorithm when it comes to ads and marketing.

i guess i'm trying to understand why TikTok is unique and why i should be concerned.


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Because it's China.


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Originally Posted by Swish
aren't there a bunch of apps that track locations, like snapchat and such?

seems like the data would be easy to obtain regardless of who has access to the information, or whether they own the app or not. especially since a lot of our data gets sold to third parties, as well as being used for the algorithm when it comes to ads and marketing.

i guess i'm trying to understand why TikTok is unique and why i should be concerned.

There are different data party types. 1st, 2nd, 3rd and zero.

1st party data is your data of your company acquired from your efforts
2nd party is acquiring someone else's first party data
3rd party is acquiring data from a data warehouse and is hot garbage
Zero party is a user willingly trades their personal info to a company in exchange for something.

When you are buying on a platform....you are buying the ability to target the platform's 1st party user data & reach multiple user IDs with audience minimums so you can't target an individual person. The only one who has direct access to the individual user data would be the platform (TikTok).

IE TikTok has all of the data and no one really knows all of that they have.


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Originally Posted by PitDAWG
My question to you would be where is it you go or what is it you do that you're so worried China will find out? I mean why would they give a damn where you go and what you do?
They may not care about him, but I think if the horizon is broadened a bit, you can see where that could be a problem.


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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/technology/elon-musk-jet-tracking.html



A Teenager Tracked Elon Musk’s Jet on Twitter. Then Came the Direct Message.
Jack Sweeney, a freshman at the University of Central Florida, said that Mr. Musk raised privacy and security concerns about his popular Twitter account, @ElonJet.


For Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla and founder of SpaceX, traveling by private jet is not such a private endeavor.

Jack Sweeney, 19, a freshman at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, has been tracking a Gulfstream G650ER that he identified as Mr. Musk’s private jet and posting maps of its whereabouts on a popular Twitter account since June 2020.

Mr. Musk is not the only famous person being followed by the pesky wingman, who has thwarted efforts by Mr. Musk and others to cloak their movements on aircraft-tracking applications and websites.

The nosy can also keep up with Drake, Mark Cuban, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates on Mr. Sweeney’s other accounts.

Mr. Sweeney said on Wednesday that he was able to track them using data from their plane’s transponders — a public record that includes the aircraft’s altitude, latitude and longitude and heading — an algorithm and a bot that he created.

But Mr. Musk was rather vexed by the flight-tracking gambit, Mr. Sweeney recalled in an interview, saying that he received a direct message on Nov. 30 from the billionaire on Twitter asking him to deactivate the account @ElonJet.



“I go like, Oh my gosh, Elon Musk just DM’d me: ‘Can you take this down? It’s a security risk,’” Mr. Sweeney said. “Then he offered me $5,000 to take it down and help him make it slightly harder for ‘crazy people to track me.’”

Mr. Sweeney provided screenshots of the exchange to The New York Times, which was not able to independently verify its authenticity.

Mr. Musk did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on Wednesday, including to say whether he sent the messages.

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The exchange highlighted the tension between open public records and privacy — and it was not the first time famous people had been tracked. Journalists have used flight-tracking apps to follow politicians ahead of vice-presidential selections. Investors use them to shadow chief executives to get wind of corporate mergers. Sports fans have used them to track coaching candidates of their favorite teams.

Mr. Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, declined to comment on Wednesday. Representatives for Mr. Bezos, the Amazon founder; Mr. Gates, one of Microsoft’s founders; and Drake, the hip-hop mogul, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington whose focus is technology and its legal implications, said on Wednesday that the Federal Aviation Administration required planes to transmit location data to prevent collisions and to help find lost aircraft.

“What this teenager is taking advantage of is a lack of foresight on the part of the F.A.A. that this would become a privacy problem for some people,” Professor Calo said.

Reached for comment on Wednesday, the F.A.A. said that the situation was outside the agency’s scope of authority.

Professor Calo was amused that a teenager would hear directly from Mr. Musk.

“There almost couldn’t be a greater power asymmetry between Musk and this teenager,” Professor Calo said. “This is not David and Goliath. This is like Goliath and a flea on David.”

Mr. Sweeney said that he was drifting off to sleep when his Android phone buzzed at 12:19 a.m. on Nov. 30. He had been in his dorm room, where several posters promoting SpaceX, Mr. Musk’s space exploration company, were hanging on the wall above his bed, according to a photograph shared on Mr. Sweeney’s personal Twitter account.

Mr. Sweeney made a counteroffer to Mr. Musk, according to the screenshots of the exchange, saying that he would abandon the account if Mr. Musk upped the ante to $50,000. He said that he would also accept a Tesla Model 3, an electric car that costs more than $38,000, adding that he was joking.

In the exchange, Mr. Sweeney was asked how he had been able to track Mr. Musk. He explained that he had obtained the plane’s transponder data. When told that paying to have the Twitter account shut down didn’t seem right, Mr. Sweeney made another proposal: How about an internship?

The exchange, which carried on for more than a month, went silent after Jan. 23.

Mr. Sweeney downplayed the privacy and security concerns associated with his tracking account for Mr. Musk, which has more than 305,000 followers.

“It’s a private jet so he goes right from the jet to the car,” he said, adding that he has long been fascinated by tracking planes. “I don’t think it’s that big of a concern. Some people are just interested in seeing where he goes.”

Mr. Sweeney said that he obtained the data for his aircraft-tracking accounts from the ADS-B Exchange, which describes itself on its website as the world’s largest source of unfiltered flight data.

Dan Streufert, the founder of ADSBexchange.com L.L.C., said in an email on Wednesday that anyone with basic electronics could obtain the signals from aircraft that broadcast their locations. The information is also available by listening to air traffic controllers, he added.

“However, it is important to note our website tracks aircraft, not individuals,” Mr. Streufert said. “We cannot say who is or is not on the plane. Mr. Musk’s companies own and operate many aircraft — this is only one of them. Mr. Musk may find Mr. Sweeney’s activities annoying, similar to paparazzi, however, this information is already public from a myriad of sources.”

Professor Calo said that as long as Mr. Sweeney did not create the flight-tracking accounts to demand money from Mr. Musk and others, it would be difficult to make a criminal case that it was extortion.

“You’d have to purposely create this harm and hold it over somebody,” he said.

Professor Calo said that it would be difficult for a public figure like Mr. Musk to bring a civil lawsuit against Mr. Sweeney contending that his privacy had been breached.

“So I think there would be real hurdles to try to pursue this kid, civilly,” he said.

Still, he cautioned that Mr. Sweeney could open himself up to litigation if he took it too far.

“That’s quite a ride,” he said. “He just has to proceed carefully from here.”

After Mr. Sweeney’s last message to Mr. Musk on Jan. 23, the exchange bore a certain finality.

“You can no longer send messages to this person,” an automated message from Twitter read.

Last edited by FloridaFan; 11/22/22 08:21 AM.

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please tell me you are not trying to equalize a kid who is publishing flight info of Musk's plane (which is public accessible) and trying to compare it to what the Chinese government has 24/7 access to (individual) American citizens' information.


They are not the same.


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I'm pointing out that people can be tracked in many ways, tik tok is hardly the primary source needed.

Our cell phones are essentially tracking devices in general, there are multitude of ways one could track someone.

Even a non-techie person could get a general sense of someone location by their social media posts. Heck, millions of people "check-in' to location when they go somewhere.


Besides, on a humorous side, I equate China tracking tik tok'rs to aliens learning about humans by our 1960's sitcoms broadcast acrost space. Just imagine aliens watching Mr Ed and wondering, "which ones are the primary species?" smile. Just look at the general content on Tik Tok, and you'd probably gladly let China have them.

Last edited by FloridaFan; 11/22/22 11:24 AM.

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You made direct contact with the head of the nail.


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Originally Posted by FloridaFan
I'm pointing out that people can be tracked in many ways, tik tok is hardly the primary source needed.

Our cell phones are essentially tracking devices in general, there are multitude of ways one could track someone.

Even a non-techie person could get a general sense of someone location by their social media posts. Heck, millions of people "check-in' to location when they go somewhere.


Besides, on a humorous side, I equate China tracking tik tok'rs to aliens learning about humans by our 1960's sitcoms broadcast acrost space. Just imagine aliens watching Mr Ed and wondering, "which ones are the primary species?" smile. Just look at the general content on Tik Tok, and you'd probably gladly let China have them.



1. Foreign governments shouldn't have 1st party access to individual American data. (how in the living heck are people ok with this?)
--- Would you care if Russia had access to this info?

2. I think you are underestimating China's Military & government from a technological perspective. They are only a few years behind us military speaking and they are on our level when it comes to coding. In many ways, they are advanced compared to the Americans I am dealing with on a regular basis... American developers have become very lazy & sloppy.

- A couple of lines of code through TikTok could cause 100 million phones to be weaponized simply by overheating them until they explode.
- Some lines of code through TickTok and someone can take over your vehicle if it is connected through BT or through the internet.
- A few lines of code through TikTok and they can record all of your keystrokes/login info and siphon off all of your accounts.

These are all real things and it's very concerning that China can have access to them through the app along with your user data.


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I'm not happy about any invasion of my privacy or gathering of my personal information. I grew up during a time when that was held in high regard.

That's just not the way our world works any longer. It's been normalized and accepted. Everyone from your local grocery store, to social media to big box stores to your cell phone gathers information on you. I for one hate the very thought in regards to any of it. But let me tell you the way I look at it. The Chinese government has no control over me. They are not able to use that information against me the way my own country and government can. My own government has jurisdiction over me. They have direct authority over me. It's they who could persecute me for my beliefs which they can easily identify by social media. The enemies you fear should probably the one's closest to home.


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Originally Posted by PitDAWG
It's been normalized and accepted. Everyone from your local grocery store, to social media to big box stores to your cell phone gathers information on you.

The Chinese government has no control over me. They are not able to use that information against me the way my own country and government can.

I really wish the American people truly understood the laws regarding their data being collected, that info being sold, and communication laws.

What people believe vs reality is light years apart.



The Chinese govt has no control over you because they never had access or the ability to communicate with you. Through apps like TikTok, that can change.


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You're going on the assumption that those laws are being kept. What I described is far more than "communicating" with you. Your own government has far more power than that.


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There are very strict international laws about what data can be collected and how to store it. (GDPR). But most people sign their rights away by clicking agree on TOS and Privacy Policies.

Im not that worried about the chinese government. Chinese hackers are a worse problem. And especially apps that you install assuming they are safe.


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Originally Posted by PitDAWG
You're going on the assumption that those laws are being kept. What I described is far more than "communicating" with you. Your own government has far more power than that.


Um... yeah. those laws can destroy/bankrupt most companies under 100 million in revenue. They are not being broken. Back in 2002... that was a much different story in my industry. Everything was the wild west. Today, our industry is much more regulated. Fines can easily be up to $16,000 per individual communication sent.

As a bonus, you get to look forward to criminal penalties on your record & jail time.


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Originally Posted by EveDawg
Im not that worried about the chinese government. Chinese hackers are a worse problem. And especially apps that you install assuming they are safe.


I'm very much aware of all of the laws. It's part of my job to know them

also, the Chinese govt has been paying hackers to back secrets & sensitive data for years. Since 2018, they have really stepped up their game and paid bigger bounties.

IE they are one in the same.


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You switched the topic from gathering personal data to hacking businesses. Those are two totally different topics. We were discussing gathering personal information on Americans.


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Nail meet coffin.


https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/tiktok-staff-wrongly-accessed-data-5093057/


TikTok staff wrongly accessed data

By Jessica Hartogs, Editor at LinkedIn News
Updated 2 hours ago


ByteDance has admitted that its employees breached TikTok user data, reports The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources. Two U.S. journalists had their data accessed by the social media company, according to an investigation by the Chinese owner of TikTok. In an internal email, TikTok's General Counsel wrote that in order to identify leaks of confidential company information, Internal Audit and Risk Control department staff had come up with "a misguided plan" to access the data of the journalists. TikTok has been under the scrutiny of the U.S. government, with several states banning the app from government devices.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilyb...s-journalists-bytedance/?sh=717dcf817da5


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ByteDance fired four employees who accessed US journalists' TikTok data

The workers were allegedly attempting to track down the sources of leaks to the reporters.

ByteDance says it has fired four employees who accessed the data of several TikTok users located in the US, including journalists. According to The New York Times, an investigation conducted by an outside law firm found that the employees were trying to locate the sources of leaks to reporters. Two of the employees were in the US and two were in China, where ByteDance is based.

"ByteDance condemns this misguided plan that seriously violated the company's Code of Conduct," a ByteDance spokesperson told Engadget. "We have taken disciplinary measures and none of the individuals found to have directly participated in or overseen the misguided plan remain employed at ByteDance."

The company reportedly determined that members of a team responsible for monitoring employee conduct accessed the IP addresses and other data linked to the TikTok accounts of a reporter from BuzzFeed News and Cristina Criddle of the Financial Times. The employees are also said to have accessed the data of several people with ties to the journalists. Forbes claims that ByteDance tracked three of its reporters who previously worked for BuzzFeed News. All three of those publications have published reports on TikTok, including on its alleged ties to the Chinese government. 

“The misconduct of those individuals, who are no longer employed at ByteDance, was an egregious misuse of their authority to obtain access to user data. This misbehavior is unacceptable, and not in line with our efforts across TikTok to earn the trust of our users," ByteDance said in a statement to Variety. "We take data security incredibly seriously, and we will continue to enhance our access protocols, which have already been significantly improved and hardened since this incident took place.”

In October, Forbes reported that members of ByteDance’s Internal Audit and Risk Control department planned to use TikTok to track the locations of specific US citizens. ByteDance refuted those claims, but the report tracks with the results of the internal investigation. The company told the Times it has restructured that department and prevented it from accessing any US data.

“No matter what the cause or the outcome was, [the employees'] misguided investigation seriously violated the company’s Code of Conduct and is condemned by the company," ByteDance CEO Rubo Liang reportedly told employees in a memo. "We simply cannot take integrity risks that damage the trust of our users, employees, and stakeholders. We must exercise sound judgment in the choices we make and be sure they represent the principles we stand behind as a company.”

Word of the investigation and employees' dismissal comes amid various attempts to ban TikTok in the US. More than a dozen states, including Georgia and Texas, have blocked the app on government-owned devices. Earlier this month, a bipartisan bill sought to effectively ban TikTok from US consumer devices, along with other social apps that have ties to China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela.

Meanwhile, the Senate has passed a $1.7 trillion spending bill, which includes a measure that would ban TikTok on most devices issued by the federal government. There will be some exceptions for elected officials, congressional staff and law enforcement. The House is yet to vote on the omnibus bill but is expected to pass it on Thursday evening. 

According to the Times, ByteDance said the fired employees accessed historical data that it plans to delete from its own data servers in the US and Singapore. The company said in June that all of TikTok's TikTok user traffic is being routed to Oracle's servers. That's now the "default storage location of US user data," but at the time ByteDance continued to back up the data on its own servers.

https://www.engadget.com/bytedance-tiktok-employees-us-user-data-journalists-210339650.html


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I just don’t get it. Complaining about tic-toc stealing your information when everyone has an an option to sign up or unsubscribe is comical.


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Originally Posted by PerfectSpiral
I just don’t get it. Complaining about tic-toc stealing your information when everyone has an an option to sign up or unsubscribe is comical.

Even more comical is that many of the people who would/are be up in arms over tik tok "tracking" them, are doing so while posting where they are every 10 minutes in their feeds.


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Originally Posted by FloridaFan
[quote=PerfectSpiral]I just don’t get it. Complaining about tic-toc stealing your information when everyone has an an option to sign up or unsubscribe is comical.


I think what people are failing to understand is that the Chinese Government has a very high probability of getting access to this data including extremely sensitive information like biometrics.


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https://www.reuters.com/technology/...bans-tiktok-official-devices-2022-12-27/

U.S. House administration arm bans TikTok on official devices


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https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose...erns-revive-push-for-tiktok-us-sale.html

Security concerns may revive push for sale of TikTok's California-based U.S. unit


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https://okcfox.com/news/nation-worl...-foreign-investment-in-the-united-states


Lawmakers consider an outright ban on TikTok in the US due to security risks

Warner fears the data TikTok is collecting on its more than 60 million U.S. users will end up on Chinese servers, including biometric data.

What I almost find is a bigger problem is that TikTok is also a communications network, and the Communist Party in China can dial the algorithms, they can dictate to TikTok, the parent company ByteDance, we’ll show this kind of content or that kind of content," the senator added. "And the proof of that is the TikToks that Chinese kids see which advances science and engineering versus the TikTok that our kids see is dramatically different.


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Nothing in the average Americans data threatens national security.


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Parents that allow their kids to use tic-tok are nuts.


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