TikTok employees improperly accessed the user data of two journalists and spied on them in a bid to discover their sources.
TikTok employees improperly accessed the TikTok user data of two journalists and spied on them, an internal investigation by parent company ByteDance has found.
According to ForbesForbes, the workers, who are no longer employed by ByteDance, tracked the journalists’ whereabouts in order to discover their sources for stories that uncovered the company’s links to the Chinese government, among other things.
The four employees who were involved in the spying campaign have lost their jobs, ByteDance said; two were based in China and two were in the US. The company has additionally stressed it is taking extra steps to protect user data, Reuters reports.
The targeted reporters were Emily Baker-White, who reported for BuzzFeed when the investigation was launched and is now at Forbes, and Financial Times journalist Cristina Criddle. Forbes reported that two more of its reporters, Katharine Schwab and Richard Nieva, also ex-BuzzFeed journalists, were spied on by TikTok.
