According to a letter obtained by Reuters on Friday, Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok informed US senators that it was working on a final arrangement with the Biden Administration that would “completely safeguard user data and US national security interests.”
In a letter dated Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew informed lawmakers that the short video app was working with Oracle on “new advanced data security controls that we intend to finalize in the near future.”
As of last month, TikTok still used US and Singapore data centers for backup despite having completed transferring information from US users to Oracle servers.
According to the letter from TikTok, employees who are situated in China “may have access to TikTok US user data subject to a set of stringent cybersecurity controls and authorization approval mechanisms monitored by our US-based security team.”
In order to fully pivot to Oracle cloud servers located in the US, TikTok stated that as it works on data issues, it plans to “delete US users protected data from our own systems.”
A representative for TikTok confirmed that the company replied to the senators’ letter. The representative told Reuters in a statement, “We look forward to connecting with Members of Congress to discuss the substance of our letter.
TikTok, according to Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn “They ought to have been upfront from the beginning but instead tried to hide their work. Americans need to be aware that if they use TikTok, Communist China has access to their data. TikTok must return to testify before Congress.”
The letter was sent almost two years after a US national security council ordered parent company ByteDance to sell its stake in TikTok over concerns that US user data would be given to China’s communist government.
The letter stated, “We realise we are among the most closely examined platforms from a security standpoint, and we intend to dispel any question regarding the protection of US user data.
With more than 1 billion active users worldwide, TikTok is one of the most widely used social media platforms, and the US is its biggest market.
