ByteDance claims to have fired four employees who had access to the data of several TikTok users in the United States, including journalists. According to The New York Times, an outside law firm investigation discovered that the employees were attempting to track down the sources of leaks to reporters.
Two of the employees were based in the United States, while the other two were in China, where ByteDance is headquartered.
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According to the company, members of a team responsible for monitoring employee behavior accessed the IP addresses and other data associated with the TikTok accounts of a BuzzFeed News reporter and Cristina Criddle of the Financial Times. Employees are also accused of accessing the data of several people with connections to the journalists.
According to Forbes, ByteDance followed three of its reporters who previously worked for BuzzFeed News. All three of these publications have run stories about TikTok, including allegations of ties to the Chinese government. Engadget has reached out to ByteDance for comment.
“The misconduct of those individuals, who are no longer employed at ByteDance, was an egregious misuse of their authority to obtain access to user data. This misbehavior is unacceptable, and not in line with our efforts across TikTok to earn the trust of our users,” ByteDance said in a statement to Variety.
“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.”
According to Forbes, members of ByteDance’s Internal Audit and Risk Control department planned to use TikTok to track the locations of specific US citizens in October.
ByteDance denied the claims, but the report is consistent with the findings of the internal investigation. According to the Times, the company has restructured that department and barred it from accessing any US data.
“No matter what the cause or the outcome was, [the employees’] misguided investigation seriously violated the company’s Code of Conduct and is condemned by the company,” ByteDance CEO Rubo Liang reportedly told employees in a memo.
“We simply cannot take integrity risks that damage the trust of our users, employees, and stakeholders. We must exercise sound judgment in the choices we make and be sure they represent the principles we stand behind as a company.”
The investigation and dismissal of employees comes amid various attempts to ban TikTok in the United States. More than a dozen states have blocked the app on government-owned devices, including Georgia and Texas.
Earlier this month, a bipartisan bill sought to effectively ban TikTok and other social apps with ties to China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela from US consumer devices.
Meanwhile, the Senate has passed a $1.7 trillion spending bill that includes a provision that would prohibit TikTok from being used on most federally issued devices.
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Some exceptions will be made for elected officials, congressional staff, and law enforcement. The omnibus bill has yet to be voted on in the House, but it is expected to pass on Thursday evening.
According to the Times, the fired employees accessed historical data that ByteDance intends to delete from its own data servers in the United States and Singapore.
In June, the company announced that all TikTok user traffic is being routed to Oracle’s servers. That is now the “default storage location of US user data,” but ByteDance was still backing up the data on its own servers at the time.
