Washington (AFP)

A US federal agency has opened a national security inquiry into the acquisition of TikTok, a video-sharing app by Chinese teenager ByteDance, which is popular with teens around the world, the New York Times reported on Friday.

According to the newspaper, the Committee on Foreign Financial Investment in the United States - which is responsible for reviewing acquisitions made by foreign companies or entities in the United States - has decided to investigate this acquisition two years after US senators publicly expressed their concern.

According to one of the New York Times' anonymous sources, the US government has evidence that the app sends data to China.

The Treasury told AFP that it did not want to comment on this information.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio welcomed the news on Twitter, "because any platform in China that collects massive amounts of data on Americans is a potential threat to our country."

"With more than 110 million downloads in the US alone, TikTok poses a counterintelligence risk that we can not ignore," two other senior US Senate officials claimed last week, calling on intelligence chiefs national "conduct an assessment of the risks to national security" posed by the application.

Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican Tom Cotton believe TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, "who is forced to abide by Chinese laws" may be forced to "cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party's intelligence services," even if user data is stored in the United States.

They are also concerned that the app will give Chinese intelligence secret access to users' smartphones and computers. The United States is already accusing Chinese telecom giant Huawei of this same procedure.

Asked by AFP, TikTok said he could not comment on a possible investigation but stressed "not to have more priority than gain the respect of our users and regulators in the United States."

TikTok also distanced itself from Chinese power and said its servers were located outside of China and therefore their "data" was "not subject to Chinese law".

In early 2019, TikTok has passed the billion downloads mark worldwide, not to mention China (where the equivalent app is called Douyin), according to Sensor Tower.

© 2019 AFP