TikTok Says Some China-Based Employees Can Access U.S. User Data, Outlines Plan for Better Safeguards

TikTok is working on a plan to better safeguard the data of its U.S. users, the company said in an open letter.

The letter was shared by The New York Times. 100 percent of U.S. user data is stored in an oracle cloud environment, and it is working with oracle on more advanced data security controls that will be finalized in the near future

U.S. data will be deleted from TikTok's server in favor of storing it with oracle. All data sharing outside of the US will be approved by the U.S. government.

The broad goal for Project Texas is to help build trust with users and key stakeholders by improving our systems and controls, but it is also to make substantive progress toward compliance with a final agreement with the U.S. Government that will fully safeguard user data and U.S. national security interests. We have not spoken publicly about these plans out of respect for the confidentiality of the engagement with the U.S. Government, but circumstances now require that we share some of that information publicly to clear up the errors and misconceptions in the article and some ongoing concerns related to other aspects of our business.

Concerns over TikTok have increased over the last two weeks after a report suggested that TikTok engineers in China had access to the data of US users. One TikTok employee said that "everything is seen in China" in recordings reviewed by the website.

The Federal Communications Commission asked Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores because of a pattern of surreptitious data practices.

Some China-based employees are able to access data from U.S. TikTok users according to the letter. In order to assign levels of access based on the sensitivity of the data, TikTok uses an internal data classification system. Going forward, it will continue to limit data access.

Some China-based employees will have access to a narrow, non-sensitive set of TikTok U.S user data. Employees will be able to use U.S. data in the development of the TikTok video recommendation algorithm.

Access will be limited and will not include user information. TikTok wouldn't give data to the Chinese government if they asked for it.

The FCC requested that Apple and GOOGLE remove the TikTok app from their app stores.

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