After being scrutinized for years over its supposed potential to be used as a surveillance tool by the Chinese Government, TikTok has finally announced that it has completed its migration of US user data to Oracle servers, ensuring that US info remains separate from its Chinese parent company.
As TikTok explains, its US user data has thus far been stored in data centers in both US and Singapore.
“Our Virginia data center includes physical and logical safety controls such as gated entry points, firewalls, and intrusion detection technologies. It’s also important to maintain backup data storage locations to guard against catastrophic scenarios where user data could be lost, and our data center in Singapore serves as the backup data storage location for our US users.”
Patriotic TikTok
As part of an agreement with Oracle, US user info will now remain solely within the US.
“For more than a year, we’ve been working with Oracle on several measures as part of our commercial relationship to better safeguard our app, systems, and the security of US user data. We’ve now reached a significant milestone in that work: we’ve changed the default storage location of US user data. Today, 100% of US user traffic is being routed to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.”
TikTok states that it’ll still use its US and Singapore data centers for backup, but US user data will soon be deleted from its own data centers as part of a full pivot to Oracle cloud servers located in the US. The update comes at a critical time, with BuzzFeed recently publishing a new report that suggests that TikTok is potentially sharing US user data with Chinese authorities through data review practices as defined by its parent company, ByteDance.
Based on BuzzFeed’s report, China-based ByteDance engineers repeatedly accessed US user data between September 2021 and January 2022. That potentially goes against sworn testimony from TikTok’s Head of US Public Policy Michael Beckerman, who appeared before Congress in a hearing in October of last year stating that it does not share information with the Chinese Government.
Technically, it could be true, in a direct sense, but these new findings suggest that TikTok may still be sharing US user data with its Chinese parent, which is shackled to strict Chinese cybersecurity laws that compel it to do so with CCP officials upon request. While there’s no concrete evidence pointing out that this happens, new findings do suggest that TikTok’s US team has been disingenuous in how it’s presented the current situation on potential data sharing and exposure. Perhaps, with TikTok user data now fully merged across US-based data storage, that’ll help alleviate such concerns, ensuring that TikTok can continue its rapid growth without further obstruction. The same could also open TikTok up to new regulatory scrutiny in the US, which may lead to new call bans for the app. Most of this also depends on the diplomatic situation between the US and China, which isn’t on the greatest terms right now.
The Wrap
All of the increasing tensions between the US and China don’t really help out ongoing business efforts. This growing distrust between the two nations seeds ongoing suspicion over Beijing’s intentions, which is why TikTok has become the focal point of data security concerns.
As new developments involving Chinese sovereign actions arise, US authorities will have no choice but to take another look at TikTok, which could once again put its US business on the line. So while this server merge temporarily staves off a looming threat, it’s not totally clear of hot water just yet. If the US ends up banning the app completely, then you can expect the rest of the world to follow.
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