(NewsNation) — Privacy issues and concerns about data collection by the Chinese government continue to plague the popular short-video platform TikTok.
Although the app is used by millions of Americans, it remains unpopular among lawmakers, who have accused TikTok of sharing people’s personal information with the Chinese government.
Recently, Forbes reported that TikTok has stored personal financial information it received from TikTok creators and businesses in China. TikTok uses this personal data to pay the creators and businesses.
According to Forbes, TikTok uses “various internal tools and databases from its Beijing-based parent ByteDance to manage payments to creators who earn money through the app.”
Venture capitalist Sultan Meghji, who is also a professor at Duke University, says, “every piece of data on TikTok until proven otherwise is fully visible to the Chinese government.”
That’s because ByteDance — the Chinese technology firm whose subsidiary owns TikTok — is subject to the country’s cybersecurity and data security laws, requiring the company to provide the Chinese government access to the data. These laws also require that this information is stored and processed in China.
“Any information you put into TikTok or any information that you allow TikTok to have … whether it’s a video, a message, you’re sending a credit card number — anything that they have visibility to, they can do with whatever they want,” Meghji said.
And users agree to it by loading the information onto TikTok, then agreeing to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
During a Congressional hearing in March, lawmakers grilled TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew on TikTok data collection.
“I have seen no evidence that the Chinese government has access to that data,” Chew testified. “They have never asked us, we have not provided.”
In response, Rep. Anna Eshoo, a Democrat from California, said she finds that “preposterous.”
So far Montana is the only state to impose an outright TikTok ban. That law goes into effect in January.
At least 34 other states have banned state agencies, employees and contractors from using TikTok on government-issued devices.
“I would caution anyone to just delete that off their phone as quickly as possible, delete their account and make sure especially children stay off of it,” Meghji said. “It’s a very dangerous app from that perspective.”
As Congress considers its next moves on TikTok, the platform has tapped Oracle to house and protect American information — but critics say this move comes too late.
