DLNews Technology:

For years, politicians have feared that TikTok could spy on its users if it benefits the interests of the Chinese company.

Now the fear has become a fact: TikTok spied on three journalists in the USA who reported critically about the social network. In addition, the parent company ByteDance (based in Beijing) has admitted to the scandal and fired three employees.

The magazine reports the employees gained access to Forbes reporters' IP addresses and other data from China in October. As a result, people dealing with journalists should also be affected.

The goal of the espionage action

Finding out which TikTok employees leaked information to the journalists. The scandal is particularly explosive because one of the reporters revealed in the summer her research using 80 hours of voice recordings that Chinese ByteDance employees had accessed data from American users.

ByteDance boss Zhang Yiming is considered the "mouthpiece" of the Chinese Communist Party.

Forbes first reported on the espionage campaign in October. At the time, ByteDance denied everything but launched an internal investigation. The group has now admitted to the scandal. A team leader was fired. Chinese manager Song Ye, to whom the man reported, resigned. "The misconduct of certain individuals who no longer work at ByteDance was an egregious abuse of power to obtain user data. This misconduct is unacceptable and does not reflect TikTok's efforts to earn the trust of our users," said TikTok spokeswoman Hilary McQuaide.

TikTok has close ties to the Chinese dictatorship.

In the past, “Facebook” had also spied on the locations of journalists using their IP addresses. However, the scandal at TikTok is much more dangerous because the group is closely linked to the Chinese dictatorship.

According to Forbes research, at least 15 employees work not only for the social media platform but also for state propaganda. The US Department of Justice has already described ByteDance boss Zhang Yiming as a "mouthpiece" for the Communist Party because of his ties to the state leadership.

In 2018, Yiming wrote, "the core values of socialism must guide technology." The entrepreneur is committed to the ideological guidelines of the Communist Party, including the "correct leadership of public opinion."

In practice, it looks like this: Videos that talk about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre or Tibet's independence have been censored by TikTok. During the protests in Hong Kong against the brutal Beijing regime, the search term "Hong Kong" on TikTok yielded mostly lyric videos about food and music, The Washington Post reported. And these are just two of numerous examples from recent years.

The US Congress is discussing banning government officials from downloading the app on their work phones. The bill must be passed this week.