TikTok has denied a report that a China-based team at its parent company ByteDance planned to use the app to track US citizens’ locations.
This was announced by the social media giant on Twitter that it was never used to “target” the American government, activists, public figures, or journalists.
The company also says it doesn’t collect accurate location data from US users.
It was responding to a report in Forbes that data had been accessed without users’ knowledge or consent.
The US business magazine reported, citing documents viewed, that ByteDance had started a monitoring project to investigate misconduct by current and former employees.
It said the project, led by a Beijing-based team, planned to collect location data from a US citizen on at least two occasions.
The report said it was unclear if data was ever collected from American citizens, but that there was a plan to obtain location data from US users’ devices.
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In a series of tweets, TikTok’s communications team said the report lacked “both rigor and journalistic integrity.”
It added that “Forbes chose not to include the part of our statement that refutes the feasibility of its core claim: TikTok does not collect accurate GPS location information from US users, meaning TikTok could not monitor US users in this way.” , as the article suggested.”
In response to a BBC request for comment, a Forbes spokesman said: “We are confident in our sourcing and stand by our reporting.”
App developers have come under scrutiny from authorities around the world, particularly over data from military and intelligence officials.
In 2020, a US national security body ordered ByteDance to sell TikTok’s American business amid concerns that user data could be leaked to the Chinese government.
TikTok announced that it migrated US users’ information to Austin-headquartered Oracle servers in June this year to resolve some regulatory issues.
Meanwhile, in the UK, TikTok faces a £27million ($30million) fine for failing to protect the privacy of children using the platform.
Last month, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office found that the video platform may have processed the data of under-13s without proper consent.
The regulator said the breach spanned more than two years — to July 2020 — but has yet to come to any definitive conclusions.
Tiktok has disputed the results, saying they are “preliminary”.
TikTok is the fastest growing social media app in the world and has been downloaded more than 3.9 billion times.
According to analytics firm Sensor Tower, the company has generated more than $6.2bn (£5.5bn) in gross revenue from in-app spend since its launch in 2017.
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