ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, fired four employees who illegally obtained the app’s user data for two U.S. journalists following the results of an internal investigation.
The investigation, which was prompted by an October article by Forbes that reported ByteDance was planning to use TikTok to monitor the personal location of specific American users, found that the staffers had accessed two reporters’ data, including their IP addresses, as well as the data of users connected to the journalists via TikTok. According to the New York Times, who first reported the news, the journalists are employed by BuzzFeed and The Financial Times.
Following the investigation by an outside party, all four employees — two based in China and two based in the U.S. — were terminated.
“The misconduct of certain individuals, who are no longer employed at ByteDance, was an egregious misuse of their authority to obtain access to user data,” a TikTok spokesperson wrote in a statement to TheWrap. “This misbehavior is unacceptable, and not in line with our efforts across TikTok to earn the trust of our users. We take data security incredibly seriously, and we will continue to enhance our access protocols, which have already been significantly improved and hardened since this incident took place.”
ByteDance’s general counsel, Erich Andersen, and the company’s chief executive, Rubo Liang, disclosed the findings in separate emails to staffers.
“I was deeply disappointed when I was notified of the situation.. and I’m sure you feel the same,” Liang wrote to staffers according to the New York Times. “The public trust that we have spent huge efforts building is going to be significantly undermined by the misconduct of a few individuals.”
