Buzzfeed recently reported that some TikTok employees in China had unrestricted access to sensitive U.S. user data — personal account data — that is not normally public. And it is in this context that FCC commissioner Brendan Carr (GOP) just sent an open letter to Apple and Google asking them to remove TikTok from their respective app stores. According to the Commissioner, “TikTok is not just a video app. It’s like a wolf in the herd collecting a huge amount of sensitive data, and the news shows that this data is being accessed. [par le gouvernement chinois, ndlr]”. That’s why the city council member is “calling for Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores in response to the network’s misleading and covert practices.” social according to”.
FCC asks Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app store
According to the commissioner, the data collected by TikTok will contain “everything from search history and views to captions in how a user clicks on son keyboards, with the help of distinctive biometric marks, including face or voice prints […] it is clear that TikTok poses an unacceptable national security threat due to its extensive data collection combined with Beijing’s unrestricted access to this sensitive data.” And to add to Apple and Google: “That is why I am asking you to apply the terms of your app stores to TikTok and withdraw it due to non-compliance with these terms.” Hours before publishing the open letter, TikTok announced that its US users’ data had been moved to US servers operated by Oracle. This is not the first time TikTok has been attacked by US authorities. Under the Trump administration, TikTok was under menace about the forced sale of part of its activities related to the United States. At the time, the White House was already citing national security risks. However, the election of Joe Biden removed most of these threats. Read also – TikTok is increasingly attracting older people, why? Although bodies such as the FCC continue to advocate for the implementation place sanctions – or at least everything necessary is being done to prevent the collection of this very sensitive data that Chinese intelligence agencies can see.