"We permanently delete such accounts as soon as they are identified, and we are constantly developing our controls to proactively detect suspicious activity," a Tiktok spokesman told the Wall Street Journal, writes Dagens Nyheter.

Tiktok's rules of use prohibit criminal activity.

The Tiktok app is owned by the Chinese tech company ByteDance. The company purchased the former US-owned app Muscial.ly, which was closed down to enable a large-scale launch of Tiktok in the US. The app is popular with young people and is mainly about posting short videos.

Criticized for censorship

Just over two weeks ago, Republican Senator Marco Rubio asked the US government to launch an investigation into the app as he believes "there is a growing burden of proof" suggesting that it censors material that does not taste Chinese rule. The senator believes that the app poses a security risk.

In late September, The Guardian wrote that leaked documents showed that Tiktok instructed his moderators to censor videos mentioning, among other things, Tibetan independence, the religious group Falun Gong or Tiananmen Square.