Two senators, Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn, have accused TikTok’s chief executive, Shou Chew, of making misleading statements to Congress regarding how the company stores and handles sensitive American user data. They have demanded answers to over a dozen questions by the end of next week, particularly focusing on concerns over how Chinese employees may have access to American user data stored in China.
This accusation comes after reports from The New York Times and Forbes that raised questions about statements made in March by Shou Chew and Michael Beckerman, the head of public policy for the Americas at TikTok, during a congressional hearing. TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, has repeatedly defended its ability to separate its U.S. operations and protect American user data.
Forbes reported that TikTok has stored the sensitive financial information of creators-including Social Security numbers and tax IDs-on servers in China, where employees can access them. The company uses internal tools from ByteDance to manage payments to creators, but the issue of Chinese access to sensitive American user data has been a concern for years. Meanwhile, The Times reported earlier this month that American user data, including driver’s licenses and potentially illegal content such as child sexual abuse materials, was shared at TikTok and ByteDance through an internal tool called Lark.
According to the report, this information was available in “groups” on Lark- chat rooms used by employees- which had thousands of members, and ByteDance workers in China and other countries could easily access that data.
The Lark data was stored on servers in China, as per the report. TikTok has not yet responded to these reports.
