Notes

TikTok Moves U.S. User Data to Oracle Servers

By Echo Wang and David Shepardson



NEW YORK/WASHINGTON - TikTok announced that it had successfully transferred data from its U.S users to Oracle Corp servers. This move could help to address U.S regulatory concerns regarding data integrity on the most popular short-video app.



The move, which was first reported by Reuters it comes two years after an U.S. national security panel ordered parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok due to fears that U.S. user data could be passed on to China's communist government.



TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps with more than 1 billion active users worldwide and counting the U.S. as its largest market.



The United States has been increasingly reviewing app developers regarding the personal data they handle, especially if some of it involves U.S. military or intelligence personnel.



The order to sell off TikTok was not enforced after Joe Biden succeeded Donald Trump as U.S. president last year.



However, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has not stopped raising concerns regarding TikTok's data security that ByteDance is now trying to resolve, Reuters previously reported.



The White House had no immediate response, while the U.S. Treasury declined to provide a response.



Reuters reported in March that TikTok was close to signing a deal with Oracle Corp to store the U.S. users' data.



Oracle was discussing the acquisition of a minority stake TikTok's in 2020. This was at the time ByteDance was under U.S. attack to sell the application. TikTok announced that all TikTok user data stored in the United States is now stored on Oracle servers in the United States by the cloud computing giant.



Oracle declined to comment.



DATA SECURITY TEAMS



TikTok previously stored U.S. user data in its data centers in Virginia and a backup in Singapore. It will now delete private data on U.S. users from its own data centers and rely on Oracle's U.S. servers, it said.



According to the company, data is still being backed up at the Singapore and Virginia centers.



According to Reuters, TikTok also has a U.S. data security group known as "USDS" that acts as a gatekeeper for U.S. user data and ringfencing it from ByteDance.



Directed by Andrew Bonillo, who was an executive in TikTok's worldwide security department The USDS currently is under the direction of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, the spokesperson said.



According to Reuters an insider told that the company is currently looking at a structure in which the team will operate on its own and not under the direction of TikTok.



Another senior executive at USDS is Will Farrell, who was previously under TikTok's Chief Security Officer Roland Cloutier. The USDS team comprises members of the content moderation team, engineers, and members from user and product operations.



ByteDance is one of China's fastest growing startups. It is the owner of Jinri Toutiao (China's largest news aggregator) and TikTok's Chinese counterpart Douyin.



In June 2021, Biden withdrew Trump-era executive orders that sought to block new downloads of WeChat and TikTok. The Commerce Department is currently writing new rules on app data security. This could result in restrictions on how apps that are located outside the United States can access U.S. data, or even ban apps that are considered to pose security risks.
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Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said last year the administration is "very serious about protecting Americans' data," but criticized Trump's strategy.



"Doing some executive order that's meaningless on TikTok is not the method to go about it," she said. (Reporting by Echo Wang in New York, David Shepardson in Washington Editing by Deepa Babington)


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