TikTok faces fresh European privacy investigation over China data transfers

By KELVIN CHAN LONDON AP TikTok is facing a fresh European Union privacy scrutiny into user material sent to China regulators stated Thursday Related Articles Ticker Italian candy giant buys Tony the Tiger Ford recalls over cars Ford recalls over cars in the US due to likely 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 Records Protection Commission opened the inquiry as a follow up to a previous examination that ended earlier this year with a million euro million fine after it discovered the video sharing app put users at liability of spying by allowing remote access their content from China The Irish national watchdog serves as TikTok s lead details privacy regulator in the -nation EU because the company s European headquarters is based in Dublin During an earlier assessment TikTok initially notified the regulator it didn t store European user input in China and that material was only accessed remotely by staff in China However it later backtracked and declared that particular figures had in fact been stored on Chinese servers The watchdog responded at the time by saying it would consider further regulatory action As a development of that consideration the DPC has now decided to open this new inquiry into TikTok the watchdog noted 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 revealed referring to the European Union s strict privacy rules known as the General Records 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 administrators that it poses a protection threat TikTok noted that it was one that notified the Information Protection Commission after it embarked on a evidence localization project called Project Clover that involved building three figures centers in Europe to ease safeguard concerns Our teams proactively discovered this issue through the comprehensive monitoring TikTok implemented under Project Clover the company stated in a declaration We promptly deleted this minimal amount of content from the servers and informed the DPC Our proactive assessment to the DPC underscores our commitment to transparency and input safety Under GDPR European user information 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 statistics privacy standard as the EU but China is not one of them