TikTok's owning company admits to spying on journalists

(Illustrative image) © Michael Dwyer/AP

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ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, admits to having spied on journalists who covered cases related to its activities.

A statement that comes at the same time as TikTok seeks to restore its image and prove its reliability in data management.

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This Friday, December 23, the Chinese new technologies company ByteDance incriminates former employees who wrongly had access to certain sensitive data, such as certain IP addresses.

These employees used it to track journalists who were investigating ByteDance, with the aim of identifying the origin of information leaks to the media.

Among the journalists targeted, a journalist from the British economic and financial daily

 and a journalist from the American information site “ 

 ”.

The two men already denounced these targeted espionage practices last October.

The employees involved no longer work for the Chinese group, assures ByteDance today, without giving more details on their number or identity.

This information further damages the reputation of TikTok, which is trying to restore its image.

Anxious to prove its reliability, the platform indicated this year that it would store all information relating to American users in the United States.

But the US Congress could ban all its elected officials from using the social network, due, according to some elected officials, to the national security threats posed by TikTok.

On December 13, a bill was tabled by parliamentarians to request the banning of the network in the United States. 

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