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TikTok acknowledged that employees might have multiple aliases, but said it relies on Google's enterprise-level Gmail service for its corporate email and their emails are stored on Google servers, where they are logged and monitored for unauthorized access. One employee said that recruiters often find themselves looking for candidates for roles at both companies. The lines are so indistinct that multiple employees described having email addresses for both companies. Former employees said that nearly 100% of TikTok's product development is led by Chinese ByteDance employees. TikTok's dependence on ByteDance extends to its technology. This results in employees working late hours after long days so they can join meetings with their Beijing counterparts. The close ties between TikTok and its parent company go far beyond user data, the former employees said.ĭirection and approvals for all kinds of decision-making, whether it be minor contracts or key strategies, come from ByteDance's leadership, which is based in China. "If the legal authorities in China or their parent company demands the data, users have already given them the legal right to turn it over," said Bryan Cunningham, executive director of the Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute at the University of California, Irvine.Īs CNBC reported in 2019, China's National Intelligence Law requires Chinese organizations and citizens to "support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work." Another rule in China, the 2014 Counter-Espionage law, has similar mandates. "We employ rigorous access controls and a strict approval process overseen by our U.S.-based leadership team, including technologies like encryption and security monitoring to safeguard sensitive user data," a TikTok spokeswoman said in a statement.īut one cybersecurity expert said it could expose users to information requests by the Chinese government. TikTok downplayed the importance of this access. Biden's order, however, sets criteria for the government to evaluate the risk of apps connected to foreign adversaries. The Trump administration, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, expressed national security concerns over the popular social media app's Chinese ownership, with Pompeo saying at one point that TikTok might be "feeding data directly to the Chinese Communist Party." TikTok has consistently denied those claims, telling CNBC, "We have never provided user data to the Chinese government, nor would we do so if asked." In the company's last four semi-annual transparency reports, it does not report a single request from the Chinese government for user data.Įarlier in June, TikTok caught a break when President Joe Biden signed an executive order that revoked Trump's order to ban the app unless it found a U.S. Last year, then-President Donald Trump sought to ban TikTok in the U.S. teenagers' second-favorite social media app, after Snapchat, according to an October 2020 report by Piper Sandler. In particular, the app has found a niche among teens and young adults - TikTok has surpassed Instagram as U.S. In just a few years, it has quickly amassed a user base of nearly 92 million in the U.S. Its parent company, ByteDance, purchased Musical.ly, a social app that was growing in popularity in the U.S., for $1 billion in November 2017, and the two were merged in August 2018. TikTok launched internationally in September 2017.