Parent company TikTok used IP addresses to track the location of journalists

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance acknowledges that employees have tracked the locations of several American journalists via the IP addresses. According to ByteDance, the employees involved have been fired and the company is talking about misconduct.

The ex-ByteDance employees used the IP addresses and other user data of several American journalists, who work for Forbes, BuzzFeed News and Financial Times, among others. With the data, the ByteDance employees wanted to find out whether the journalists were near ByteDance employees, in order to identify sources of leaked news.

Erich Andersen, general counsel at TikTok, said in an internal email which is owned by Forbes that it is normal for companies to have an internal audit group that investigates whether employees have violated company policies. “However, in this case, individual employees abused their positions to gain access to TikTok user data.” A TikTok spokesperson acknowledged to Forbes that user data had been unlawfully accessed.

The audit group followed the journalists because they wrote about the company earlier this year. For example, meeting recordings were leaked to BuzzFeed News in June, in which the company said China-based developers had access to data from US users. The head of the audit group and four Chinese and American employees have been fired by ByteDance for their involvement in tracking the American journalists.