TikTok said it has completed the transfer of its US users’ information to Oracle’s servers, a move that could address US regulatory concerns over data integrity on the popular short video app.
The move, which was first reported by Reuters, comes nearly two years after a US national security panel ordered the parent company ByteDance to disinvest TIC Toc Due to fears that US user data could be passed on to the Communist government of China.
TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps in the world, with over 1 billion active users globally, and counts the US as its largest market.
The United States is increasingly scrutinizing app developers over the personal data they handle, especially if some of it involves US military or intelligence personnel.
After the order to sell Tiktok was not implemented Joe Biden Succeeded Donald Trump US President last year.
The panel, known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), however, retains concerns over data security on TikTok, which ByteDance is now hoping to address, Reuters previously reported. was.
The White House did not immediately comment, while the US Treasury declined to comment.
In March, Reuters reported that a deal was about to happen for TikTok. Oracle To store the information of its US users.
Oracle had discussed acquiring a minority stake in TikTok in 2020, when ByteDance was under US pressure to sell the app. The cloud computing giant now stores all of TikTok’s US user data on Oracle data servers in the United States as part of the new partnership, TikTok said.
Oracle declined to comment.
data protection team
TikTok was previously storing its US user data in its data centers in Virginia, with backups in Singapore. It will now remove the private data of US users from its own data centers and rely entirely on Oracle’s US servers, it said.
The company said the Virginia and Singapore centers are still being used to back up the data.
A company spokesperson told Reuters that TikTok has also established a dedicated US data protection team, known as “USDS,” to be a gatekeeper to US user information and is managed by ByteDance. rings with.
Led by Andrew Bonillo, who was an executive in TikTok’s global security division, USDS currently reports to TikTok CEO Shaw Zi Chew, the spokesperson said.
A source told Reuters that the company is discussing a framework under which the team will operate autonomously and not be under the control or supervision of TikTok.
Another senior executive at USDS is Will Farrell, who previously worked under TikTok’s chief security officer Roland Cloutier. The USDS team includes content moderation personnel, engineers, and members of user and product operations.
ByteDance is one of the fastest growing startups in China. It owns the country’s leading news aggregator, Jinri Toutiao, as well as the Chinese equivalent of TikTok. doyin,
In June 2021, Biden withdrew Trump-era executive orders seeking to ban new downloads of WeChat and TikTok. The Commerce Department is writing new rules on app data protection that could potentially put restrictions on how apps located overseas use US user data or even apps with serious security risks prohibit.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said last year that the administration is “very serious about protecting Americans’ data,” but criticized Trump’s approach.
“Doing some executive order that is meaningless on TikTok is not the way to do it,” she said.
© Thomson Reuters 2022