London, Europe Brief News – TikTok stated that it has begun routing data from American users to Oracle servers in the United States. While TikTok has promised to protect the privacy of its users, a recent BuzzFeed News article alleges that the company’s workers in China have “repeatedly” accessed US users’ data for at least many months. Let’s review the safety issues faced by users after the TikTok and oracle partnership.
TikTok AND Oracle Partnership
Employees at TikTok have allegedly admitted in recordings of internal staff meetings and presentations acquired by BuzzFeed News that they had to ask their Chinese colleagues to get US user data since they couldn’t access it themselves. “Everything is viewed in China,” according to one employee of TikTok’s trust and safety department, and “an engineer in China had access to everything,” according to another.
Read More: Apple iPhone Battery Lawsuit: iPhone Users Get Payout in Lawsuit
Similar claims, disclosed by CNBC last year claim that these occurrences occurred between September 2021 and January 2022.
China Exposing US Customer’s Data
ByteDance, TikTok’s parent firm, is situated in China, where TikTok has received years of criticism for possibly exposing the data of US customers to China. When Trump was president in 2020, he tried to persuade the business to separate its US assets from ByteDance by threatening it with a statewide ban and claiming that TikTok posed a danger to national security.
Also Read: WhatsApp Allows You Silence Group Callers
Though it never sold its US assets, TikTok contemplated making Oracle its “trusted technology partner.” After President Joe Biden entered office, the deal looked on its final legs, but it reappeared in March with tales of Project Texas.
Oracle’s Texas headquarters is the target of this effort, which aims to prevent the Chinese company ByteDance from accessing the data stored on Oracle’s servers that belong to US customers. TikTok has announced that it will be moving to Oracle’s servers as part of this partnership.
Securing the App
We have been working with Oracle for more than a year on many steps as part of our business agreement to further secure our app, systems and the security of US user data; Albert Calamug writes on the TikTok US security and public policy blog. “Today, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure receives 100 per cent of all US user traffic.”
Conclusion
Tiktok assures users that backing up will be done on the business’s US Oracle Cloud Servers, which are now situated in Virginia and Singapore. However, the company says it plans to erase all user data from these locations before the move is complete. After the TikTok and oracle partnership, it has become unclear when TikTok will completely switch to Oracle’s servers. The firm didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment from The Verge.
There is still more we can do, says Calamus. ‘We are aware that we are one of the most closely examined platforms in terms of security, and we seek to dispel any question regarding the protection of US user data. ‘
