USA: According to an internal investigation conducted by TikTok's parent company ByteDance, the user data of at least two US journalists as well as those of people associated with them were accessed by some employees of the company.

Four employees were let go as a result of the incident, two in the US and two in China, the company confirmed. TikTok has come under scrutiny in the US due to national security concerns.

It is unfortunate for TikTok that reports of ByteDance employees spying on American journalists have now come to the fore. Concerns are already being raised about the company's security and privacy.

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Efforts are being made to ban TikTok outright and several US states have prohibited the use of the app on official cell phones. For its part, TikTok is in talks with China to keep user data separate.

ByteDance CEO Rubo Liang and TikTok CEO Shaw Chew both sent internal emails to employees at their respective companies informing them of the incident.

Liang expressed his "deep disappointment" that the "misconduct of some individuals" would damage the reputation the company has worked so hard to establish. Chew agreed, calling the behavior "unacceptable".

An outside law firm conducted an internal investigation. According to the third email, the spying incident happened because of Tiktok's audit and risk team.

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Erich Anderson, TikTok's general counsel, informed staff members that the team was being reorganized. The fired employees were taking part in an investigation to find company leakers.

The two journalists being followed are Christina Criddle of The Financial Times and a reporter from BuzzFeed.
His whereabouts were reportedly monitored by three Forbes reporters, including Richard Nieva, Catherine Schwab and Emily Baker-White.

All of them had prior employment with BuzzFeed. Song Ye, head of internal audit and risk control at ByteDance, and Chris Lepitak, head of internal audit at TikTok, were among those fired.

ByteDance reportedly intends to use TikTok's data to monitor specific US citizens, according to an October report by Forbes. This was strongly denied by the business of the time.

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As Buzzfeed reported earlier this year, some US user data may be accessed from China. The company was prompted to investigate by the Forbes article.