TikTok admits employees spied on journalists during covert internal investigation

ByteDance admits to ‘egregious misuse’ of data as part of a covert investigation

TikTok has repeatedly denied that its data can be accessed in China (AP)

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has admitted it accessed the data – including the location – of some journalists as part of an internal investigation into the source of separate leaks of user information.

The Chinese company was carrying out an inquiry into how data belonging to US users became accessible in China. As part of the investigation, ByteDance employees tracked multiple journalists covering the company, accessing their locations to see if they had been in the same area as ByteDance employees, the company said.

The journalists included reporters from Forbes, Buzzfeed and the Financial Times among others, according to reports published by the newspapers.