According to our colleagues at the BBC, TikTok spied on the movements of a journalist for several weeks by tracking down her cat’s account. The Chinese social network wanted to compare its IP address with those of employees suspected of having spoken to the press.
Here is a new cartridge that will probably be used against TikTok. Christina Criddle, a London journalist specializing in new technologies for the Financial Times, told a frightening story to our colleagues at the BBC.
Two days before Christmas 2022, TikTok called the journalist to tell her that two employees in China and two others in the United States had consulted his data tracking for several days, without his consent and without his knowledge.
“It was really scary and horrifying, and personally, quite violent. I was at my family with my teenage sister, my teenage cousins – and they all use TikTok all the time. They were like, ‘Whoa, should we be worried?’ she declares.
TikTok spies on journalist to identify whistleblowers
Specifically, the Chinese social network confirmed that members of its external audit department tracked Christina’s IP address to compare it with those of an indeterminate number of company employees. The idea of the maneuver was to find the identity of the employees who met Christina and other journalists in secret to release confidential company documents. TikTok is fully aware of having “abused their authority as part of this internal investigation.
Christina does not know how long she was followed, but she knows that this intrusion took place during the summer of 2022. “If my position was monitored 24/7, it was not just limited to my actions at work – which would not be acceptable even if that was the case – but it also concerned my private life”, he said annoyed.
Also read: TikTok confirms that your personal data is sent to China
Illegal and voluntary tracing
She continues: “The real threat and the real thrill was that I was just trying to do my job. But where the rub is that Christina’s TikTok account wasn’t even linked to her name. In effect, he was in the name of his cat Buffy, and no public information in the biography linked this account to Christina or her profession. According to Alan Woodward, cybersecurity expert at the University of Surrey, such a level of tracing is not accidental. “Someone had to do some additional research to find out that the chat account was actually Christina’s.” he assures in the columns of the BBC.
For its part, Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, said that it “deeply regretted” which constituted amaterial breach” of her code of conduct and that she was “determined to make sure this never happens again.” As a reminder, in December 2022, TikTok employees spied on American journalists, again with the same objective of identifying sources.
Source : BBC
