Tech

TikTok confirms that your personal data is sent to China

TikTok has just updated its privacy policy for the European Economic Area. The opportunity to see black on white that the personal data of users from the Old Continent can be sent and viewed by platform employees in China. That has the merit of being clear.

TikTok collects data
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For years now, TikTok has been suspected of transferring the personal data of American and European users to China, where its parent company ByteDance is located. Remember that these fears are legitimate, since this company is a member of the Chinese Federation of Companies and the Internet. As specified in the statutes of this organization, each member company must follow “the way of Xi Jinpin (editor’s note: the current president of China)” while agreeing to be supervised by “Chinese Cyberspace Administration”that is the Chinese institution in charge of web surveillance and censorship.

It is this specific point that prompted the Irish Data Protection Commission in September 2021 to open an investigation into TikTok to determine whether the personal data of European users is actually transferred to China.

Also read: TikTok – will China use the app to track you?

TikTok acknowledges transferring user data to China

However, against all odds, TikTok has just knowingly admitted the facts of which it is accused. Indeed, the social network announced this November 2, 2022 in an official blog post updating its privacy policy for the European Economic Area. We learn in particular that the social network “authorizes certain employees of our group located in Brazil, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and the United States to access user data remotely TikTok”.

The application explains allow this practice to continue to operate the platform and guarantee “a reliable, pleasant and safe TikTok experience”. She adds that these data are used to improve the performance of recommendation algorithms and to detect bots and fake accounts. In addition, TikTok ensures that the collection and transfer of this data respects “a series of robust security controls and approval protocols, and through recognized methods under the GDPR (Editor’s note: General Data Protection Regulation).

In this post, Elaine Fox, Chief Privacy Officer at TikTok, also dwells on user location data. She claims that the app does not “does not collect precise location information, whether based on GPS technology or otherwise, from users in Europe”. As a reminder, a recent study proved that TikTok could recover your passwords and bank details via its integrated browser.

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