Lots of creators and businesses they shared with TikTok their own personal financial informationsuch as their tax and social security numbers, to receive payments from the platform in recent years: Forbes has found that TikTok has kept that sensitive data on servers in China that workers there can access. Despite CEO Shou Chew reassuring the US Congress that all US data was in Virginia or Singapore.
TikTok, financial information of creators shared on servers in China
According to Forbes reports, TikTok makes use of several tools and internal databases of its parent company ByteDance, based in Beijing, to handle payments to creators who earn money through the app. Among them are many of its most famous stars in the United States and Europe. Forbes also explains that the same tools are used for pay external suppliers and small businesses who collaborate with TikTok.
But a series of documents obtained by Forbes from multiple sources in various parts of the company show that among this data is very sensitive personal and financial information. And they are saved in China.
The data in China and the words of the CEO
The discovery not only denies what TikTok has ensured. But it also raises questions about whether employees who do not have permission to access that data are able to do it. The boss of TikTok Shou Zi Chew testified to Congress earlier this year that US user data is held on physical servers outside of China. “American data has always been in Virginia and Singapore in the past, and to access it you need our engineers globally,” she said under oath in a House hearing in March.
TikTok spokesperson, Alex Haureksaid in a statement released to Forbes that “we are confident in the veracity of Shou’s testimony.” ByteDance did not comment on a detailed request for clarification.
Data retention remains a sensitive issue for any social network. But the United States has repeatedly raised doubts about the risk of control by the Communist Party of China whether the data is stored in China.
Over the past year, TikTok has therefore touted its plans for to separate Americans’ data from China in a $1.5 billion project called Project Texas. This initiative involves keeping TikTok data in America, with an American partner. And it is crucial to reopen negotiations with the Biden administration on a deal that would allow the wildly popular app to operate in the United States.
Talks stalled late last year. Be the director of the FBI Christopher Wray and the Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen have expressed national security concerns with the app.
Who has access to American (and also European) data
The company TikTok and ByteDancand they didn’t provide answers on how many people can see the creators’ financial information. Nor on who can access the geographic location. And did not comment on any unauthorized access to this data. They haven’t even clarified with Forbes whether the company is still holding data in China.
Storing European creators’ banking information on servers in China could create several issues for European Union privacy laws. The GDPR protects the fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons, in particular the right to the protection of personal data. And it includes rules to protect that European data remains in Europe.
TikTok started the Project Clover, an initiative to protect the data of its European users, similar to Project Texas for American users. However, the company remains under investigation by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), which is the main regulator of social networks in the EU. DPC is investigating whether TikTok violated the GDPR by transferring European users’ personal data from the EU to China and whether it adequately informed users about how it treated their information. The agency recently fined Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) a €1.2 billion fine for violating the GDPR.
At the moment, the Forbes journalistic investigation is being examined by the American and European privacy commissions. But after calling the CEO to testify, the US Congress could intervene even on the basis of this survey alone. We will keep you posted.