TikTok executive admits Australian users’ data accessed by employees in China

‘Employees can’t get access [to user data] without a clear justification and levels of approval,’ TikTok’s head of data security says. Photograph: Tingshu Wang/Reuters

Australian user data is accessible to TikTok employees based in China on a “very strict basis”, the company’s head of data security, Will Farrell, has said.

In their first public appearance before Australian members of parliament since the government joined Canada, the US and the UK in banning TikTok from government-owned devices amid concerns about the company’s connections to China, TikTok executives were questioned at length by a parliamentary committee examining foreign interference on social media.