Forbes Alleges ByteDance Planned to Use TikTok to Monitor Locations of Specific American Citizens (forbes.com) 28
Thursday a Forbes senior writer reported:
A China-based team at TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, planned to use the TikTok app to monitor the personal location of some specific American citizens, according to materials reviewed by Forbes.
The team behind the monitoring project — ByteDance's Internal Audit and Risk Control department — is led by Beijing-based executive Song Ye, who reports to ByteDance cofounder and CEO Rubo Liang. The team primarily conducts investigations into potential misconduct by current and former ByteDance employees. But in at least two cases, the Internal Audit team also planned to collect TikTok data about the location of a U.S. citizen who had never had an employment relationship with the company, the materials show.
It is unclear from the materials whether data about these Americans was actually collected; however, the plan was for a Beijing-based ByteDance team to obtain location data from U.S. users' devices.
Challenging the article, TikTok responded on Twitter that their service "does not collect precise GPS location information from U.S. users, meaning TikTok could not monitor U.S. users in the way the article suggested." But Forbes' senior writer thinks that's a misleading denial, writing on Twitter that "We never mentioned GPS in the story. In fact, we quoted their spokesperson saying they collect approximate location via IP address. Not using GPS does not mean they could not use that approximate location to monitor certain individuals."
TikTok also acknowledged on Twitter that they do have a team that will "acquire information they need to conduct internal investigations of violations of the company codes of conduct," but says the team follows a specific set of policies and processes "as is standard in companies across our industry." In Forbes' article, TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said that TikTok collects approximate location information (based on IP addresses) to "among other things, help show relevant content and ads to users, comply with applicable laws, and detect and prevent fraud and inauthentic behavior."
But Forbes' senior writer said in their article that "the material reviewed by Forbes indicates that ByteDance's Internal Audit team was planning to use this location information to surveil individual American citizens, not to target ads or any of these other purposes." The Internal Audit and Risk Control team runs regular audits and investigations of TikTok and ByteDance employees, for infractions like conflicts of interest and misuse of company resources, and also for leaks of confidential information. Internal materials reviewed by Forbes show that senior executives, including TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, have ordered the team to investigate individual employees, and that it has investigated employees even after they left the company.
TikTok's response on Twitter? Behavior like that would be a firing ofference. "Any use of internal audit resources as alleged by Forbes would be grounds for immediate dismissal of company personnel."
TikTok also said on Twitter that their service "has never been used to 'target' any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists, nor do we serve them a different content experience than other users." The response of Forbes' senior writer? "I'm glad they say TikTok hasn't been used to 'target' some specific groups. I am nonetheless concerned that they planned to use it to monitor specific Americans, which is what we reported.
"Also, for what it's worth, they didn't answer this question when we asked it to them on Wednesday.... Neither TikTok nor ByteDance denied anything we reported, either in the pre-publication process, when we told them what we planned to report and asked for comment, or since then. They have also not requested a story update."
Thanks to Slashdot reader koavf for submitting the story
The team behind the monitoring project — ByteDance's Internal Audit and Risk Control department — is led by Beijing-based executive Song Ye, who reports to ByteDance cofounder and CEO Rubo Liang. The team primarily conducts investigations into potential misconduct by current and former ByteDance employees. But in at least two cases, the Internal Audit team also planned to collect TikTok data about the location of a U.S. citizen who had never had an employment relationship with the company, the materials show.
It is unclear from the materials whether data about these Americans was actually collected; however, the plan was for a Beijing-based ByteDance team to obtain location data from U.S. users' devices.
Challenging the article, TikTok responded on Twitter that their service "does not collect precise GPS location information from U.S. users, meaning TikTok could not monitor U.S. users in the way the article suggested." But Forbes' senior writer thinks that's a misleading denial, writing on Twitter that "We never mentioned GPS in the story. In fact, we quoted their spokesperson saying they collect approximate location via IP address. Not using GPS does not mean they could not use that approximate location to monitor certain individuals."
TikTok also acknowledged on Twitter that they do have a team that will "acquire information they need to conduct internal investigations of violations of the company codes of conduct," but says the team follows a specific set of policies and processes "as is standard in companies across our industry." In Forbes' article, TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said that TikTok collects approximate location information (based on IP addresses) to "among other things, help show relevant content and ads to users, comply with applicable laws, and detect and prevent fraud and inauthentic behavior."
But Forbes' senior writer said in their article that "the material reviewed by Forbes indicates that ByteDance's Internal Audit team was planning to use this location information to surveil individual American citizens, not to target ads or any of these other purposes." The Internal Audit and Risk Control team runs regular audits and investigations of TikTok and ByteDance employees, for infractions like conflicts of interest and misuse of company resources, and also for leaks of confidential information. Internal materials reviewed by Forbes show that senior executives, including TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, have ordered the team to investigate individual employees, and that it has investigated employees even after they left the company.
TikTok's response on Twitter? Behavior like that would be a firing ofference. "Any use of internal audit resources as alleged by Forbes would be grounds for immediate dismissal of company personnel."
TikTok also said on Twitter that their service "has never been used to 'target' any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists, nor do we serve them a different content experience than other users." The response of Forbes' senior writer? "I'm glad they say TikTok hasn't been used to 'target' some specific groups. I am nonetheless concerned that they planned to use it to monitor specific Americans, which is what we reported.
"Also, for what it's worth, they didn't answer this question when we asked it to them on Wednesday.... Neither TikTok nor ByteDance denied anything we reported, either in the pre-publication process, when we told them what we planned to report and asked for comment, or since then. They have also not requested a story update."
Thanks to Slashdot reader koavf for submitting the story
I'm hoping.. (Score:1)
Re: I'm hoping.. (Score:2)
Re: I'm hoping.. (Score:2)
Ad personalization wrong worry (Score:5, Insightful)
This illustrates why all the concern over personalized advertisements or building up ad profiles is misplaced. The danger isn't from the company putting the data they have together in a way that tells them if you'll be more likely to click on an ad for perfume or GPUs.. The danger is from them having the raw information about you that they can put to bad uses. Google or facebook wouldn't be any less of a threat to privacy if they didn't do any ad personalization as they'd still (if they had some dark team like this with permission) be able to surreptitiously save all that information you dribble out whenever you connect to a server they run and use it for nefarious purposes.
Ad personalization isn't the a threat to privacy. It's evidence that these companies can collect the kind of information that threatens your privacy if they choose to.
Re: (Score:2)
Totally agree, however, if you are seeing advertising and that advertising is in some way personalised then that is a clear sign that you have a privacy and security problem and need to improve your protections in your browser and elsewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
>>> in the US it's used by companies for profit. In China the government will use this politically, economically and militarily against citizens in the US and other foreign countries
>> In the past 22 years the USA has killed so many civilians it's hard to conscience
> And China never had purges?
You do see how that advances your argument exactly not at all, right?
Re: (Score:2)
It's all tracking to me. The root problem is the corporates' ad industry driving the tracking. Take that away and the governments don't get their free lunch any more.
Privacy Shield demands are bullshit (Score:3)
This story also illustrates the extent to which the EU demands on the US with respect to privacy shield are either hypocritical bullshit or, at best, an example of blind bureaucratic box checking.
In short, the EU is raising all sorts of legal objections to the transfer of data on EU citizens to the US by companies like facebook on the grounds that the US doesn't provide sufficient legal protection for EU citizens against their data getting swept up in US signals intelligence activities. In other words, they are demanding the US offer stronger guarantees that the data on EU citizens won't be (without proper justification) swept up by the NSA and saved in a database somewhere.
I understand and appreciate the worry but the fact that challenges are repeatedly made to the US privacy shield guarantees but not to data transfers to Chinese companies makes the whole thing stick. Either it's just a legal excuse to go after/make life hard for US tech companies or it's an incredibly naive policy that is willing to accept Chinese promises despite some pretty good evidence that there isn't much of a barrier between government and private ownership of data in China (e.g. Chinese companies will help the government monitor dissidents etc..) but demands higher standards from the US because we aren't willing to systemically lie about our protections for citizen data.
Re:Privacy Shield demands are bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
the fact that challenges are repeatedly made to the US privacy shield guarantees but not to data transfers to Chinese companies makes the whole thing stick
By reading your comment one might have the impression that EU is fine sharing data with China but not with the US. You understand it's exactly the opposite, right? EU has a relatively strict "firewall" about sharing data with China, there is limited case-by-case exceptions [digitorc.com] allowed by GDPR. The reasons are so obvious that nobody is challenging this for now, even China.
For the US it is different: US has been trying for long time to breach into GDPR perimeter by basically saying "look, we're the good guys, you can trust us". US is not treated differently than China by EU, it's just that you guys *demand* to be treated differently, to which Europe politely responds with a middle finger.
As a European citizen, I am not 100 percent happy of how things are going here, but I personally enjoy the superior privacy guarantees that we have compared to the US, and the admittedly vastly superior democratic processes almost in every member country (exceptions apply). For sure I don't know anyone from my circle of European acquaintances who aspires to moving their center of life to the US. Again, maybe citizens of, say, Hungary, would prefer US to their country, but as a whole I can assure you (because I've seen it with my eyes) that life is much better here.
Re:Privacy Shield demands are bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
US is not treated differently than China by EU
Your comment is pretty good and I wish you would post from an account so it was more visible. You are not totally right about the above. The EU treats the US legal system as more trustworthy than the Chinese one which means that it is easier to legally share data with the US. The real problem is India where the EU accepts Indian contracts even though they aren't nearly as enforceable as US ones.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I guess you are probably right. From what I understand outsourced people happily download such data and work on it on their laptops. That's illegal but nobody cares.
There's actually no real content in the article. (Score:1)
Sounds like a hit piece, where someone is just making an allegation based on nothing. The Forbes article simply has a clickbait title, and then provides nothing to back up its title.
How would these 2 people be targeted? (Score:1)
What I'd like to know, is how were they going to target two specific people? Were they hoping that those people would download the app, or would it be a situation where, if enough people in the general public had downloaded the app, those two wouldn't even need to. I'm talking about how, for instance, Facebook has shadow profiles on people that have never even used it. Facebook does it by having their button on just about every webpage.
If ByteDance were going to do it like this, I'm wondering how TIkTok wou
Re: (Score:2)
Given we don't know who the individuals are, it's hard to answer definitively. I'm guessing these are individuals who ByteDance knew already had TikTok accounts.
BTW nowadays the type of Facebook tracking you mention really only works on Chrome users, since it requires loading third-party elements on the various web pages.
. Forbes fucked up ? (Score:1)
"to Monitor Locations of Specific American Citizens"
Which citizens? Does ByteDance have a particular interest in twelve year old girls? I'm wondering how many high profile American insiders are using TikTak and being tracked by ByteDance. Is our president using TikTuk between press releases? Are congresspeople enjoying the guilty pleasure of TT when nobody's watching? Perhaps CEOs and research scientists are risking all for a TT video?
The headline sounds like clickbait. Forbes should carefully investigate h
Re: (Score:2)
Those "twelve year old girls" you're pointing toward are someone's children. There is a high likelihood that those kids are within proximity of their parental units at certain times of day, particularly when they are normally sleeping. You have a brain. I encourage you to stop knee-jerking and start thinking critically.
No shit (Score:3)
If you had
a. A treasure trove of location data on private citizens, possibly including the idiot offspring of high-up muckety-mucks at places like the DoD or its contractors
b. A legal/political obligation to the CCP to support its strategic geopolitical objectives
what the fuck would you do, pretend you've somehow got nothing?
Exactly. (Score:3)
The company's own plans do not matter, cannot matter, have never mattered.
The fact that they have the data, and that they operate in a jurisdiction where they can be compelled to turn over the data (and then gagged from saying what the government is now doing with the data), is all that matters. And that applies to both the US and China.
Pre-Snowden, I could imagine some people sticking their heads in the sand and pretending that stuff doesn't happen, or if it does, it doesn't happen here, or if it does, it
Re: Exactly. (Score:2)
Granting your cynicism for the sake of argument, the strategic objectives of the United States haven't entailed wars of conquest for resources in over a century, and certainly not against anything approximating a peer adversary, war against which would be a guaranteed bloodbath on both sides.
Our ideologies generally preach personal freedom, theirs preach unwavering loyalty to the state as embodied in one man.
All told, if I have to throw in with someone, Team America seems like the better choice for pragmati
Wouldn't lying make more sense? (Score:2)
TikTok: We are not using GPS specifically to track Americans from groups A, B, or C.
So, this is an admission, for all intents and purposes.
meanwhile (Score:2)