- A report says that TikTok can still access India users’ data.
- The Indian government banned the TikTok app in 2020.
- The app was banned under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act in India.
Despite the fact that India banned Chinese-owned short videos app TikTok over geopolitical concerns in 2020, troves of personal data of Indian individuals who had utilised the platform are reportedly still publicly accessible to staff at the company, including the parent company ByteDance. According to a report by Forbes, the news comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration threatens to ban the platform, which is used by more than 100 million people in the US, if the Chinese owner that owns TikTok does not sell its stake.
How can TikTok still access Indian users’ data?
According to the employee and a Forbes assessment of internal TikTok and ByteDance programmes, anyone at the companies with simple access to their tools may retrieve and analyse granular data about prior TikTok users in India. Another source independently verified that Indians’ data has been available since the country blocked the app, as per the report.
One social mapping application, dubbed “NSA-To-Go” by a TikTok employee, can generate a list of any public or private user’s closest TikTok connections and personally-identifying information about them; it still brings up TikTok profiles of people in India.
The region where someone lives, their TikTok usernames (often their first and last name), and how they share TikTok content with phone contacts and users across other social platforms can all be retrieved by staff by entering a TikToker’s unique identifier, or UID, a string of numbers linked to more specific information about the person.
The same UID can be used across TikTok and ByteDance’s internal systems to learn more about a person, such as how they search. According to the TikTok employee, it is the key to creating a “digital dossier” on any user, including those with private accounts, the report said.
Why did India ban TikTok?
Due to the “emergent nature of the threat,” the Indian government banned 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok, in 2020. The apps were prohibited under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act because they are “prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, the security of the state, and public order”.
