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.
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.
TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said that TikTok collects approximate location information based on users’ 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."
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 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.
