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TikTok to be scrutinized by the FTC as it fails to represent its stance on US data security
7 Jul, 2022 / 06:00 AM / Tiktok

Source: http://www.mashable.com

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Mashable: Two U.S. senators want the Federal Trade Commission to look into how TikTok in response to the leaked audio recordings.

Two U.S. senators want the Federal Trade Commission to look into how TikTok has "repeatedly lied" about how it has handled user data from Americans.

As reported by Huffpost, in a letter to FTC Head Lina Khan, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner and Vice Chair Marco Rubio asked the agency to look into the social media platform and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.

Concerns about the security of TikTok's data have been going on for years, and the Trump administration tried to take TikTok off app stores in 2020. This is why people want an investigation.

The letter was written in response to a BuzzFeed News article that said leaked audio recordings showed that ByteDance staff "repeatedly" accessed the app user data of Americans.

Due to "apparent deception by TikTok," the senators requested an investigation in their joint letter. They also said that the app misrepresented about how a company is run, how data is kept safe, and processed.

Less than a week ago, Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, requested that Google and Apple remove TikTok from their app stores in response to the BuzzFeed News investigation.

In a statement released on Tuesday, TikTok Vice President Michael Beckerman said that engineering teams from the company "across the world," including those in China, "may need access to data for technical operations that are directly related to their roles."

This access is subject to a number of strict controls, safeguards such encryption for certain data, and authorized approval methods that are managed by our leadership/security team in the United States.

In a statement to CNN, TikTok said that the BuzzFeed News claim was "misleading." CNN says that last month, TikTok said it would move the information of its American users from servers in Singapore and Virginia to a cloud platform.