ByteDance—China-based ByteDance employees repeatedly accessed nonpublic data of US TikTok users
Leaked audio from 80+ internal TikTok meetings published by BuzzFeed in June 2022 revealed China-based ByteDance employees repeatedly accessed nonpublic data about US TikTok users. The recordings contained 14 statements from nine employees indicating engineers in China had access to US data between September 2021 and January 2022. One employee stated 'Everything is seen in China.' A 2024 DOJ filing confirmed TikTok employees used Lark to send sensitive US user data that wound up stored on Chinese servers.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data Security | -against | secondary | -0.50 |
| User Privacy | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.443 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (critical ×2) × confidence (0.59)× agency (negligent ×0.5)
Evidence (1 signal)
China-based ByteDance employees repeatedly accessed nonpublic data of US TikTok users
Leaked audio from 80+ internal TikTok meetings published by BuzzFeed in June 2022 revealed China-based ByteDance employees repeatedly accessed nonpublic data about US TikTok users. The recordings contained 14 statements from nine employees indicating engineers in China had access to US data between September 2021 and January 2022. One employee stated 'Everything is seen in China.' A 2024 DOJ filing confirmed TikTok employees used Lark to send sensitive US user data that wound up stored on Chinese servers.