Chinese tech giant ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok social media platform, has admitted its employees accessed data from TikTok to track journalists in a bid to identify the source of leaks to the media.
According to Agence France Presse (AFP), several employees had obtained the IP addresses of a Financial Times reporter and a former BuzzFeed reporter in order to determine whether they were in the same location as ByteDance colleagues suspected of leaking confidential information. However, the plan failed, partly because the IP addresses only revealed approximate location data.
All the involved employees have been fired, the company said. The company’s chief internal auditor Chris Lepitak, who led the team involved in the operation, has been fired, while his China-based manager Song Ye has resigned, the Guardian reported.
ByteDance said it condemned the “misguided initiative that seriously violated the company's Code of Conduct”. ByteDance and TikTok had initially denied the allegations when they were first reported earlier this year. The TikTok owner claimed it “could not monitor US users in the way the article suggested”, and added that the social media platform had never been used to “target” any “members of the US government, activists, public figures or journalists”.