TikTok denies report data used to track or ‘target’ US citizens

TikTok has denied it is used to "target" US citizens following a report that its Chinese parent planned to track the location of people via the video-sharing app.

A report by Forbes on Thursday claimed that, in at least two cases, a China-based team at ByteDance, the platform's owner, planned to collect TikTok data about the location of a US citizen.

The alleged tracking of US citizens was to be carried out by ByteDance's internal audit and risk control team, Forbes said, which conducts investigations into misconduct by current and former ByteDance employees. However, the US business publication said the two unnamed Americans had never been employed by ByteDance.

Forbes, citing undisclosed material it had viewed, said it was unclear whether the location data was ultimately collected from users' devices. It said the material indicated that ByteDance did not intend the location information to be used for commercial purposes such as ad targeting.

TikTok responded to the allegations on a corporate Twitter account overnight, saying it does not collect precise GPS location information from US users, meaning it "could not monitor US users in the way the article suggested". It added that TikTok had never been used to "target" any "members of the US government, activists, public figures or journalists".

As well as criticising the "integrity" of Forbes's journalism, TikTok's response also said any use of internal audit resources as alleged by the article would be "grounds for immediate dismissal of company personnel".

However, TikTok's own privacy policy states that the app may collect precise GPS location data from users, with their permission. It says: "We collect information about your approximate location, including location information based on your sim card and/or IP address. With your permission, we may also collect precise location data (such as GPS)."

In July, a report by Internet 2.0, a US-Australian cybersecurity firm, claimed that the TikTok app on Android - the operating system used by phone makers such as Samsung and Huawei - queries the device's GPS location at least once an hour. According to the analytics firm data.ai, there are 112 million TikTok iPhone and Android users in the US. TikTok has more than 1 billion users worldwide.

TikTok also denied it pushes different content to government officials, regulators, activists or journalists.

In a statement to Forbes, ByteDance added: "Like most companies our size, we have an internal audit function responsible for objectively auditing and evaluating the company and our employees' adherence to our codes of conduct."

The Forbes report has been published against a backdrop of political and regulatory concern about TikTok. In 2020, the then US president, Donald Trump, issued a series of executive orders including an effective ban on downloading the app and ordering the sale of its US arm, amid concerns over user data being accessed by the Chinese government.

Those were rescinded by Trump's successor, Joe Biden, who has replaced them with an order that directed the US commerce department to work with other agencies to produce recommendations to protect the data of people in the US from foreign adversaries. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which scrutinises business deals with non-US companies, is also conducting a security review of TikTok.

Fears over the app's use of data reignited in June after Buzzfeed claimed that China-based employees at ByteDance have accessed nonpublic data about US TikTok users, in a story based on leaked recordings of internal meetings. In one recording a member of TikTok's trust and safety department said "everything is seen in China".

In the UK in August, a group of Conservative politicians successfully lobbied the Houses of Parliament to take down its TikTok channel, citing concerns over the transfer of data to China. In Ireland, the data watchdog, which regulates the app on behalf of the European Union has launched an investigation into "transfers by TikTok of personal data to China".

Alan Woodward, a professor of cybersecurity at Surrey University in the UK, said the Forbes allegations would further undermine trust in TikTok and its owner.

"TikTok can deny the inference of the Forbes article all they like, but it's down to trust, which is in short supply," he said.

A Forbes spokesperson said: "We are confident in our sourcing, and we stand by our reporting."

TikTok and ByteDance have been contacted for comment.