Tech Security Army analyzes TikTok security concerns after Schumer’s information warning

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The U.S. Army is carrying out a security evaluation of China-owned social networks platform TikTok after a Democratic legislator raised nationwide security concerns over the app’s handling of user information, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy stated on Thursday.

Talking to press reporters at an occasion at the American Business Institute think tank, McCarthy said he bought the evaluation after the top Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Chuck Schumer, asked him to investigate the possible risks in the military’s usage of the popular video app for hiring American teens.

” National security experts have actually raised issues about TikTok’s collection and handling of user information, consisting of user material and interactions, IP addresses, location-related information, metadata, and other delicate personal details,” Schumer wrote in a Nov. 7 letter to McCarthy.

Schumer said he was particularly worried about Chinese laws needing domestic companies “to support and work together with intelligence work managed by the Chinese Communist Party.”

The Committee on Foreign Financial Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has actually released a nationwide security review of TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance Innovation Co’s $1 billion acquisition of U.S. social networks app Musical.ly.

TikTok did not instantly react to an ask for remark.

The business has previously highlighted its independence from China however has failed to assuage congressional concerns about the security of the individual information of U.S. citizens who use the platform and whether content on the platform is subject to any censorship from Beijing.

In a Nov. 5 blog post, TikTok’s U.S. basic supervisor, Vanessa Pappas, said that the company’s data centers “lie totally beyond China.” She said U.S. user information is stored in the United States, with backup redundancy in Singapore.

ByteDance is one of China’s fastest-growing startups. About 60%of TikTok’s 26.5 million month-to-month active users in the United States are in between the ages of 16 and 24, the company stated this year.

Previously this year, Schumer likewise called on the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission to conduct a national security and personal privacy examination into FaceApp, a face-editing picture app developed in Russia.

The potential for the sharing of army info through the usage of apps was highlighted after scientists found in 2018 that fitness-tracking app Strava was inadvertently exposing military posts and other sensitive websites.

In 2017, the Army purchased its members to stop utilizing drones made by Chinese maker SZ DJI Innovation Co Ltd because of “cyber vulnerabilities” in the products.