TikTok stated it doesn’t gather exact GPS location data from customers within the US, which implies it can’t be used to observe individuals “in the way in which [Forbes] instructed.” The app’s communications group has tweeted that in response to a Forbes article claiming {that a} China-based group from its father or mother firm, ByteDance, had deliberate to make use of the app to trace “the private location of some particular American residents.” It’s unclear if details about these people had truly been collected.

Forbes reported that the group behind the monitoring mission is a part of ByteDance’s Internal Audit and Risk Control division. The division is often in control of wanting into potential misconduct by present and former firm workers. But the publication stated that the group supposed to make use of TikTok to gather knowledge in regards to the location of a US citizen that had by no means been employed by the corporate in at the very least two circumstances. 

TikTok has fired again in opposition to the publication’s allegations, accusing Forbes of omitting the a part of its assertion the place it stated that it would not gather exact GPS location. That portion “disproved the feasibility of [the piece’s] core allegation,” it defined. In addition, TikTok pressured that it has by no means been used to focus on members of the US authorities, public figures, activists and journalists and that it would not serve them content material completely different from different customers. In its report, Forbes wrote that TikTok “didn’t reply questions” about whether or not the interior audit group at ByteDance focused members of these teams. 

As Forbes notes, TikTok beforehand made guarantees to American authorities and lawmakers in an effort to assuage their considerations that China may use the app in opposition to US residents. In June, TikTok introduced that it “modified the default storage location of US person knowledge” to “Oracle cloud servers situated within the US.” The service made the announcement simply as BuzzFeed News printed a report about China-based ByteDance workers repeatedly accessing nonpublic knowledge on TikTok customers within the US. That report was based mostly on hours of inside conferences that have been leaked to the publication. 

A few weeks later, TikTok detailed its plans on how to make sure the safety of US customers’ knowledge in a letter despatched to to lawmakers. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew assured them that the corporate will “delete US customers’ protected knowledge from [its] personal methods and totally pivot to Oracle cloud servers situated within the US.” Forbes talked to an Oracle spokesperson who stated that whereas TikTok is at present utilizing its cloud companies, Oracle has no perception on what it is doing and that the service nonetheless has full management of all its data.