Crises don’t seem to come to TikTok alone, as the US Department of Justice has launched an investigation into the possible involvement of a well-known app in spying on the country’s top journalists!
Informed sources said targeted journalists are covering technology.
The sources also indicated that the investigation, launched late last year, is linked to ByteDance’s admission in December that its employees had wrongfully obtained data from American TikTok users, including two journalists and several of their associates, according to the New York Times.
Documents and Leaks
The ByteDance employees involved in this surveillance, who were subsequently fired, apparently tried to find leaks of internal conversations and business documents to journalists. They have already gained access to the IP addresses and other data of the messengers and people they were connected to through their TikTok accounts.
For its part, parent company TikTok has confirmed that it is making changes to prevent similar breaches in the future.
But all these assurances have done little to alleviate the growing demands from politicians in the US and elsewhere to ban the app!
A few days ago, ByteDance was asked by the US administration to sell its shares in the widely adopted app or face a US ban.
The Republican and Democratic parties also supported a bill in the US Senate that would allow President Joe Biden to ban TikTok.
Several countries, including America, Canada, the UK and New Zealand, have banned politicians from downloading and using the app on their phones while in government.
