TikTok parent company fires staffers who obtained data of U.S. users: ‘Egregious misuse of their authority'

TikTok, long considered a threat to privacy and security, has now fired four employees who "inappropriately obtained" the data of some American users, including journalists. 

TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance revealed on Thursday that an internal probe found employees had inappropriately obtained the data of U.S. TikTok users, according to The New York Times. 

The Times noted that two reporters from BuzzFeed and The Financial Times are among the people who had their data obtained. Forbes has reported that ByteDance also tracked "multiple Forbes journalists as part of the covert surveillance campaign."

"[TikTok] employees tracked multiple journalists covering the company, improperly gaining access to their IP addresses and user data in an attempt to identify whether they had been in the same locales as ByteDance employees," Forbes reported. 

Earlier this year, ByteDance staffers on a team tasked with monitoring employee conduct attempted to find the source of suspected leaks of internal conversations and other communications to outside journalists, New York Times reporter Cecilia Kang noted. 

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"In doing so, the employees gained access to the IP addresses and other data of two reporters and a small number of people connected to the reporters via their TikTok accounts. They were trying to determine if those individuals were within proximity of ByteDance employees, according to the company, which added that the efforts failed to find any leaks," Kang wrote. 

ByteDance general counsel Erich Andersen announced findings of an internal review of the ordeal in an email to staffers that was obtained by the Times. 

"All four employees involved in the scheme were fired," Kang wrote. "The employees obtained historical data, according to ByteDance and TikTok officials. For several months, the company said, it has been in the process of putting all U.S. data on the Oracle cloud, but that the past data accessed by the ByteDance employees were still available. TikTok said it planned to delete all historical data outside of the Oracle systems."

When reached for comment, ByteDance said the probe resulted in disciplinary measures. 

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"ByteDance condemns this misguided investigation that seriously violated the company's Code of Conduct. We have taken disciplinary measures and none of the individuals found to have directly participated in or overseen the misguided plan remain employed at ByteDance," a ByteDance spokesperson told Fox News Digital. 

A TikTok spokesperson called it "an egregious misuse of their authority" by the now-terminated individuals. 

"The misconduct of certain individuals, who are no longer employed at ByteDance, was an egregious misuse of their authority to obtain access to user data. This misbehavior is unacceptable, and not in line with our efforts across TikTok to earn the trust of our users. We take data security incredibly seriously, and we will continue to enhance our access protocols, which have already been significantly improved and hardened since this incident took place," the spokesperson told Fox News Digital. 

The news comes after the Senate unanimously voted to ban the highly controversial social media superpower from government devices for its alleged role as a data miner for the Chinese Communist Party. 

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"The Coming Collapse of China" author Gordon Chang recently told Fox News Digital that the threat of TikTok was "existential" for the U.S. 

"TikTok sends all the data that it collects from [the] user’s phone to Beijing. Beijing, therefore, can use that to learn about people, which means it can intimidate" or even "blackmail" them, Chang said. "China is hoovering up the world’s data, and TikTok is one of the means it uses to do that." 

Chang also noted that China uses the TikTok algorithm to promote Communist Party "narratives" to the outside world. 

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Those "narratives" have real world consequences, Chang explained. "In 2020, there’s reporting that Beijing used TikTok to foment violence on American streets, which is also an act of war." 

Fox News’ Jeffrey Clark contributed to this report.