A member of The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner Brendan Carr’s asks Apple and Google to remove the Chinese-owned TikTok video app from their App stores, citing privacy concerns that American users data can be sent back to Beijing.
TikTok is not just another video app. That’s the sheep’s clothing.
It harvests swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing.
I’ve called on @Apple & @Google to remove TikTok from their app stores for its pattern of surreptitious data practices. FCC commissioner said in a tweet.
“Apple and Google to remove the platform from their app stores, calling it “a sophisticated tool” for harvesting user data to be seen in China.” he said in the Interview given tech company.
The reports stats that U.S. TikTok users data accessed by Beijing-based employees.
“As you know TikTok is an app that is available to millions of Americans through your app stores, and it collects vast troves of sensitive data about those U.S. users.
TikTok is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance — an organization that is beholden to the Communist Party of China and required by the Chinese law to comply with PRC’s surveillance demands,” Carr said in a letter addressed to Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook.
“It is clear that TikTok poses an unacceptable national security risk due to its extensive data harvesting being combined with Beijing’s apparently unchecked access to that sensitive data.
“We’re also making operational changes in line with this work — including the new department we recently established, with U.S.-based leadership, to solely manage U.S. user data for TikTok,” the company added.
What is TikTok Collecting?
Brendan Carr’s Letter
- Search and Browsing histories.
- Keystroke patterns and location
- Faceprints and voiceprints
- Text, images, and videos on a device’s clipboard.
BuzzFeed News reported last week, that TikTok’s staff in China had access to the data of U.S.-based users until January 2012.
After news, TikTok went on the defensive, announcing that all its U.S. user’s data is now being stored on Oracle servers based in the country.
Mr. Carr said he didn’t think TikTok’s effort would make a difference.
“TikTok has long claimed that its U.S. user data has been stored on servers in the U.S., and yet those representations provided no protection against the data being accessed from Beijing,” he wrote. “Indeed, TikTok’s statement that ‘100 percent of US user traffic is being routed to Oracle’ says nothing about where that data can be accessed from.”
If Apple and Google are refusing to remove the app from their store, he will give them until the 8th of July to explain why they are not doing so.
This is not the first time TikTok facing privacy issue.
