TikTok faces fresh European privacy investigation over China data transfers

By KELVIN CHAN LONDON AP TikTok is facing a fresh European Union privacy review into user statistics sent to China regulators commented Thursday Related Articles Ticker Italian candy giant buys Tony the Tiger Ford recalls over cars Ford recalls over cars in the US due to possible 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 Input 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 identified the video sharing app put users at pitfall of spying by allowing remote access their details from China The Irish national watchdog serves as TikTok s lead input privacy regulator in the -nation EU because the company s European headquarters is based in Dublin During an earlier inquiry TikTok initially advised the regulator it didn t store European user records in China and that material was only accessed remotely by staff in China However it later backtracked and disclosed that specific 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 impact of that consideration the DPC has now decided to open this new inquiry into TikTok the watchdog disclosed 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 noted referring to the European Union s strict privacy rules known as the General Details 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 bureaucrats that it poses a guard pitfall TikTok noted that it was one that notified the Material Protection Commission after it embarked on a statistics localization project called Project Clover that involved building three records centers in Europe to ease protection concerns Our teams proactively discovered this issue through the comprehensive monitoring TikTok implemented under Project Clover the company reported in a message We promptly deleted this minimal amount of evidence from the servers and informed the DPC Our proactive summary to the DPC underscores our commitment to transparency and information measure Under GDPR European user statistics 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 figures privacy standard as the EU but China is not one of them