Short-form video service TikTok has announced it has taken an “important step” in securing US user data, with sensitive data associated with them being stored in the country by default.
Chinese society ByteDance, owner of TikTok, said it has stored a significant portion of US user data in a data center in Virginia until now. Now the developer has entered into a partnership agreement with Oracle and redirected US traffic to the new partner’s cloud resources.
“Today, 100% of US user traffic is routed to Oracle’s cloud infrastructure. We still use our US and Singaporean data centers for backup, but as we continue our work, we plan to remove US users’ private data from our own data centers and switch entirely to servers. in the Oracle cloud located in the United States. »
This measure is only the beginning of the transformation of TikTok, because the service still raises many questions from the American authorities. In their quest to limit the global influence of Chinese tech giants, they are trying to ensure that ByteDance will no longer have access to US user data.
The document also indicates that only confidential information about Americans will be available on Oracle’s servers, their dates of birth and their telephone numbers. And the Chinese employees of ByteDance will always have access to the most valuable data, for example, about what interests users in the United States: from cat videos to political opinions. And it is this information that worries the American authorities the most, they wonder if a recommendation algorithm based on it can be used as a tool of foreign influence.
