Short video service TikTok has announced that it has reached a “significant milestone” in securing data for US users, with sensitive data associated with them stored in the country by default.
Chinese company ByteDance, which owns TikTok, clarified that it has stored a significant portion of US user data in a data center located in Virginia until now. Now the developer has entered into a partnership agreement with Oracle; and redirected American traffic to the cloud resources of the new partner.
“Today, 100% of US user traffic is being routed to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure; We still use our US and Singapore data centers for backup; but as we continue our work we expect to delete US users’ private data from our own data centers; and fully pivot to Oracle cloud servers located in the US”.
TikTok is keeping US data in the United States due to increasing security concerns
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This measure is only the beginning of the transformation of TikTok, as the service still raises numerous questions from the US authorities. In their quest to limit the global influence of the Chinese tech giants; they are trying to ensure that ByteDance will no longer have access to US user data.
In confirmation of this, almost immediately after the announcement of the transfer of American user data to the Oracle cloud, the publication of the BuzzFeed News resource followed, which claims that the company’s Chinese employees had access to American user data from at least September 2021 to January 2022.
The material also notes that only confidential information about Americans will be available on Oracle servers; their dates of birth and phone numbers. And ByteDance’s Chinese employees will still have access to the most valuable data; for example, about what interests users in the United States: from cat videos to political opinions. And it is this information that worries the American authorities most of all; they are wondering if a recommendation algorithm based on it can be in use as a tool of foreign influence.
