TikTok allows employees to access European data
After the great controversy that arose about whether employees could TikTok In China access to data of Europeans. The company announced this week that it plans to update its privacy policy to explicitly list China as one of the countries where workers can access data from EU users, such as location data that users choose to share.
TikTok's policy update comes amid a year-long investigation by the Irish Data Protection Commission, which is looking into its data transfer policies under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. The investigation is part of increasing scrutiny by Western governments of the video-sharing platform, which some US officials have described as a national security area due to frequently close ties between Chinese companies and the government in Beijing.
TikTok, which is owned by China-based ByteDance, says in its announcement that its privacy policy update aims to “include greater transparency in how we share user information outside of Europe and how we collect user location information.” The new policy goes into effect on December 2.
TikTok allows employees to access European data
Elaine Fox, the platform's head of privacy for Europe, explained in a statement on Wednesday that a global team helped keep the user experience "consistent, enjoyable and secure."
Although TikTok currently stores European users’ data in the United States and Singapore, “we allow some employees within our group of companies located in Brazil, Canada, China, Palestine, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States to access European users’ data.” According to Fox. She added: “Our efforts are focused on limiting the number of employees who have access to European user data, reducing the flow of data outside the region, and storing European user data locally.”
She also said that this approach was “subject to a series of robust security controls and consent protocols, and within methods recognized under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).”
This came the week in which a senior official at the US Communications Regulatory Authority said that “Tik Tok” should be banned in America.
“I don't think there's a path forward for anything other than a ban,” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said.
ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has repeatedly denied the idea of the Chinese government controlling the platform.
TikTok is considered the fastest growing social media application in the world, and has been downloaded nearly 4 billion times. It has generated more than $6.2 billion (£5.4 billion) in revenue from in-app spending since its launch in 2017.
