The US government had asked TikTok’s Chinese parent company to sell it
(Picture: Getty Images)TikTok is drawing up plans with US lawmakers to make changes to its data security and governance without requiring its parent firm, China’s ByteDance, to sell it, according to reports.
The short-form video app is working with the Biden administration to draft an agreement to resolve national security concerns about its use of users’ data, the New York Times reported on Monday.
It has been more than two years since a US national security panel ordered ByteDance to divest TikTok because of fears that US user data could be passed on to China’s communist government.
TikTok is one of the world’s most popular social media apps, with more than 1 billion active users globally, and counts the United States as its largest market.
Once someone creates an account, the social network collects data about their activities and preferences based on the videos they watch.
The app also knows the device you are using, your location, IP address, search history, and the content of your messages.
It also collects device identifiers to track your interactions with advertisers. TikTok “infers” factors such as your age range, gender and interests based on the information it has about you, and in the US, TikTok can collect biometric information including face and voiceprints.
TikTok denies that the Chinese government can access any of this information.
In 2019, the US Federal Trade Commission fined ByteDance $5.7 million for collecting information from under 13s in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, leading to a similar investigation in the UK.
On Monday, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office said TikTok may face a £27million fine for breaching UK data protection law involving children‘s privacy over more than two years to July 2020.
