Is TikTok sending data to China? Latest Citizen Lab research says probably not
- New research findings say that TikTok does not display “overtly malicious behaviour” and is not a threat to US national security
- Researchers find no evidence of censorship in TikTok but its sister app Douyin restricts some politically sensitive keywords
TikTok, the short video-sharing app owned by Chinese company ByteDance, does not pose a national security threat to the US, a new study by the University of Toronto-affiliated research group Citizen Lab concluded, as the Biden administration continues to review the potential risks posed by Chinese apps to determine whether they should be banned.
In a report published on Monday, the Citizen Lab said it found no “overt data transmission” by TikTok to the Chinese government since the app did not contact any servers located in China during its testing. However, researchers did not rule out the possibility that user data gathered outside of China could be sent to the country later.
According to lead research author Pellaeon Lin, TikTok collects similar amounts of data as Facebook to track user behaviour and serve targeted ads. This data includes device information such as identifiers and network address names, as well as usage patterns such as the posts liked by a user.
ByteDance did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent on Tuesday. A transparency report released by TikTok last month, which listed law enforcement data requests it received globally in the second half of 2020, did not show any requests from China, where only its sister app Douyin is available.