ByteDance fires 4 employees who accessed TikTok data of US journalists

(Representational Image: Solen Feyissa via Unsplash)

Popular short-video platform TikTok has said it has fired four employees who unlawfully accessed the private data of journalists in the US.

Engadget reported that TikTok parent ByteDance hired an outside law firm to conduct an investigation into the allegations. The investigation led to two employees in the US and two in China.

The law firm told ByteDance that they were trying to find the source of a recent leak that had been shared with the journalists in question.

Among the victims were personnel from Buzzfeed News and Financial Times. Forbes also claimed that TikTok tracked three of its reporters. The perpetrators may have also accessed information of several people with ties to the reporters.

The three publications have written about TikTok's ties with the Chinese government.

“The misconduct of those individuals, who are no longer employed at ByteDance, was an egregious misuse of their authority to obtain access to user data. This misbehavior is unacceptable, and not in line with our efforts across TikTok to earn the trust of our users," ByteDance said in a statement to Variety.

"We take data security incredibly seriously, and we will continue to enhance our access protocols, which have already been significantly improved and hardened since this incident took place.”