ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, said on Thursday that an internal investigation found that employees had inappropriately obtained the data of U.S. TikTok users, including that of two reporters.
Over the summer, a few employees on a ByteDance team responsible for monitoring employee conduct tried to find the sources of suspected leaks of internal conversations and business documents to journalists. In doing so, the employees gained access to the IP addresses and other data of two reporters and a small number of people connected to the reporters via their TikTok accounts. They were trying to determine if those individuals were in proximity of ByteDance employees, according to the company, which added that the efforts failed to find any leaks.
The investigation was initiated after an article was published by Forbes, and the inquiry confirms part of that report and highlights the privacy and security risks associated with TikTok that U.S. lawmakers, state governors and the Trump and Biden administrations have raised for more than two years. More than a dozen states have banned TikTok from government-issued devices, and the company has been in prolonged negotiations with the administration on security and privacy measures that would block any potential access to U.S. user data by ByteDance and the Chinese government.
All four employees involved in the scheme were fired, the company said, correcting an earlier statement that one of the four had resigned. Two of those employees were working in China and two were in the United States. ByteDance said it had restructured its internal audit and risk team and had removed any access to U.S. data from that department.
The targeted reporters were Emily Baker-White, who wrote for BuzzFeed and is now at Forbes, and Cristina Criddle of the Financial Times, ByteDance said, although it declined to identify other affected TikTok users. Forbes reported that two more of its reporters, who are also former BuzzFeed reporters, were targeted. ByteDance said its investigation did not conclude that those additional reporters were affected but said it would reexamine raw data to determine if the allegations were true.
The revelations come amid growing concerns by U.S. officials about the privacy and national security risks posed by TikTok, a hugely popular video-sharing app with an estimated 100 million American users.
Congress is set to vote as early as this week on a proposal that would ban TikTok from any federal government-issued devices.