TikTok is owned by Chinese technology company ByteDance and has come under fire since the company admitted that certain employees had access to users’ data in the United States and Europe.
Fear of data theft
More and more governments and parliaments are banning TikTok on their employees’ work phones and other business devices for fear of data theft and espionage. For example, last week D66, ChristenUnie and Party for the Animals called for all political parties in the Netherlands to stop using TikTok until the social media platform has resolved all security problems.
Theo Bertram, vice president of European public policy at TikTok, acknowledges that there are “genuine concerns” among Western governments about China. “I think there’s a higher obligation on us to demonstrate how we secure users’ data.”
Self saved
According to him, TikTok will therefore work in the same way in Europe as in the United States. In that country, where TikTok is no longer allowed on the mobile phones and tablets of many civil servants, a special deal has been signed with Oracle.
That company ensures that American user data is stored on servers in the United States itself and does not leave the country.
New data centers
“We are working on three new data centers and we will also work with a partner,” Bertram says of the approach in Europe, without naming the partner and giving more details.
TikTok has about 150 million users in Europe, of which 25 million are in the United Kingdom. The app has over a billion users worldwide.
