TikTok faces fresh European privacy investigation over China data transfers

By KELVIN CHAN LONDON AP TikTok is facing a fresh European Union privacy inspection into user figures sent to China regulators mentioned Thursday Related Articles Ticker Italian candy giant buys Tony the Tiger Ford recalls over cars Ford recalls over cars in the US due to probable fuel pump failure Hot Property Fiske House in Weston a breathtaking classic This entrepreneur spots deepfakes for celebrities Can he help average Joes too What I learned from my first meeting with a financial advisor The Figures Protection Commission opened the inquiry as a follow up to a previous analysis that ended earlier this year with a million euro million fine after it located the video sharing app put users at hazard of spying by allowing remote access their records from China The Irish national watchdog serves as TikTok s lead material privacy regulator in the -nation EU because the company s European headquarters is based in Dublin During an earlier probe TikTok initially reported the regulator it didn t store European user details in China and that facts was only accessed remotely by staff in China However it later backtracked and commented that several facts had in fact been stored on Chinese servers The watchdog responded at the time by saying it would consider further regulatory action As a product of that consideration the DPC has now decided to open this new inquiry into TikTok the watchdog stated The purpose of the inquiry is to determine whether TikTok has complied with its relevant obligations under the GDPR in the context of the transfers now at issue including the lawfulness of the transfers the regulator disclosed referring to the European Union s strict privacy rules known as the General Statistics Protection Regulation TikTok which is owned by China s ByteDance has been under scrutiny in Europe over how it handles personal user information amid concerns from Western leaders that it poses a protection exposure TikTok noted that it was one that notified the Records Protection Commission after it embarked on a details localization project called Project Clover that involved building three content centers in Europe to ease precaution concerns Our teams proactively discovered this issue through the comprehensive monitoring TikTok implemented under Project Clover the company explained in a comment We promptly deleted this minimal amount of statistics from the servers and informed the DPC Our proactive account to the DPC underscores our commitment to transparency and facts precaution Under GDPR European user records can only be transferred outside of the bloc if there are safeguards in place to ensure the same level of protection Only countries or territories are deemed to have the same details privacy standard as the EU but China is not one of them