Amidst its privacy and security issues with the US government, TikTok has temporarily suspended its plans of hiring for US security deal, Reuters reports. The security consultant, would help the company to implement a potential security agreement with the US, two people familiar with the matter said.
TikTok has been making moves to assure Washington of the safety of the data of its citizens; but has not really made much progress in the last couple of months. The Chinese company had always insisted that the personal data of US citizens in its procession cannot be accessed by China or any other entity under the influence of China.
The Chinese app could lose one its biggest markets in the world. The US House of Representatives had last month ordered lawmakers to delete the app from their official phones.
This has been coming for TikTok, and does not sound like shocking news to millions of people out there. In the past couple of weeks, the app has been banned by many US states; but the House of Representatives takes it to a new height.
According to an internal memo as obtained by the NBC, the order was reportedly issued by Catherine L Szpindor, the chief administrative officer of the House. Also, TikTok has been banned from being downloaded and installed on all House-issued devices going forward.
“House staff are NOT allowed to download the TikTok app on any House mobile devices,” the memo said. “If you have the TikTok app on your House mobile device, you will be contacted to remove it.”
TikTok had repeatedly denied any wrongdoings as it concern some of the allegations brought against it.
A new investigation showed that its parent company ByteDance had been spying on several American journalists. According to the Financial Times, ByteDance had access to commercially sensitive information as a result of its relationship with TikTok.
“Over the summer, four employees on the ByteDance internal audit team looked into the sharing of internal information to journalists. Two members of staff in the US and two in China gained access to the IP addresses and other personal data of FT journalist Cristina Criddle, to work out if she was in the proximity of any ByteDance employees, the company said.”
According to the reports, a BuzzFeed journalist and several users connected to the reporters through their TikTok accounts were also targeted in the ByteDance probe.
