"3 Ways China's Access to TikTok Data is a Security Risk"

TikTok has come under fire in recent months. Both lawmakers and citizens in the US have questioned its data collection practices and potential ties to the Chinese state. Researchers found that data of some American users had been repeatedly accessed from China. TikTok's parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, denied that it shared information with the Chinese government and announced that it had migrated its US user traffic to servers operated by Oracle. Still, it was not enough to clear the air, and security and privacy experts continued to be worried. A security researcher at Infosys Consulting stated that theoretically, TikTok could collect all kinds of data, including text, images, videos, location, metadata, draft messages, fingerprints, or browsing history. The platform has grown rapidly in the past few years and now exceeds 1 billion monthly active users globally, 100 million of which are based in the US.   According to a Pew Research Center survey, 67% of American teens have installed this app more than Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, or Twitter. Once governments get access to data owned by companies, they could leverage this in three primary ways, including learning more about citizens and foreigners, intellectual property theft, and highly targeted influence campaigns

CSO reports: "3 Ways China's Access to TikTok Data is a Security Risk"