Tiktok parent company Bytedance has reportedly fired four of its employees over improper assessment of journalists personal data on the platform.
According to the management, the employees violated the company’s policies by accessing data of TikTok users which included two journalists, in an attempt to track down the source of information leaks.
In a report released, the employees accessed IP addresses of two U.S based reporters via their TikTok accounts, one of which is a staff at BuzzFeed news and the other one a staff at the financial times.
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A spokesperson for BuzzFeed news displeased with Bytedance breach on the data of its employee said in a statement, “We are deeply disturbed by a report that ByteDance employees accessed the personal user data of a reporter for BuzzFeed News, showing a blatant disregard for the privacy and rights of journalists as well as TikTok users.”
Also, a spokesperson at U.K.-based Financial Times said, “Spying on reporters, interfering with their work or intimidating their sources is completely unacceptable. We’ll be investigating this story more fully before deciding our formal response.”
The guilty employees have however had their employment terminated for gross misconduct.
In a bid to douse the rising tension, a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement, “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. 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.”
This disclosure comes as Tiktok faced a backlash among American lawmakers who view it as a threat to U.S. national security given TikTok’s ownership by a China-based conglomerate that is under the jurisdiction of the Chinese Communist Party.
TikTok has been trying to finalize a deal with the Biden administration to address U.S. concerns about the security of user data in the app and ensure China’s government would not be able to access that information.
The social media company is reported to have spent $1.5 billion to date to form a U.S.-based data security division aimed at meeting the U.S. government’s requirements.
TikTok has admitted that it used its own app to spy on reporters as part of an attempt to track down the journalists’ sources, according to an internal email.
The data was accessed by employees of ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company and was used to track the reporters’ physical movements. The company’s chief internal auditor Chris Lepitak, who led the team involved in the operation, has been fired, while his China-based manager Song Ye has resigned.
They looked at IP addresses of journalists who were using the TikTok app in an attempt to learn if they were in the same location as employees suspected of leaking confidential information. The effort, which targeted former BuzzFeed reporter Emily Baker-White and Financial Times reporter Cristina Criddle among other reporters, was unsuccessful, but resulted in at least four members of staff based in both the US and China improperly accessing the data, according to an email from ByteDance general counsel Erich Andersen. All four have been fired. Company officials said they were taking additional steps to protect user data.