TikTok Spied on Journalists by Accessing Their Data to Try to Find Sources

 

There is a reason states across the country are banning TikTok from official devices including Texas, South Carolina, and South Dakota.

President Trump previously warned that the CCP is collecting data from American TikTok users, even issuing an Executive Order aimed at banning the communist controlled app.

President Trump was right again.

 

In a rare moment of unity, the Senate voted to ban TikTok on governmental phones and other electronic devices.

The “No TikTok on Government Devices Act” presented by Republican Senator Josh Hawley passed with ease with no member of the Senate objecting the bill.

Senator Hawley said in a statement, “TikTok is a Trojan Horse for the Chinese Communist Party. It’s a major security risk to the United States, and until it is forced to sever ties with China completely, it has no place on government devices.”

Now, we are learning that TikTok tracked multiple journalists gaining IP addresses and user data to try to find sources.

Forbes reports:

An internal investigation by ByteDance, the parent company of video-sharing platform TikTok, found that employees tracked multiple journalists covering the company, improperly gaining access to their IP addresses and user data in an attempt to identify whether they had been in the same locales as ByteDance employees.

According to materials reviewed by Forbes, ByteDance tracked multiple Forbesjournalists as part of this covert surveillance campaign, which was designed to unearth the source of leaks inside the company following a drumbeat of stories exposing the company’s ongoing links to China. As a result of the investigation into the surveillance tactics, ByteDance fired Chris Lepitak, its chief internal auditor who led the team responsible for them. The China-based executive Song Ye, who Lepitak reported to and who reports directly to ByteDance CEO Rubo Liang, resigned.

“I was deeply disappointed when I was notified of the situation… and I’m sure you feel the same,” Liang wrote in an internal email shared with Forbes. “The public trust that we have spent huge efforts building is going to be significantly undermined by the misconduct of a few individuals. … I believe this situation will serve as a lesson to us all.”