In a first, Chinese video-sharing platform TikTok has said that it can access user data in the United Kingdom and European Union.
In a statement, the popular social media company said that it needs to balance its privacy policy with a requirement for staff to do their jobs.
The disclosure by TikTok comes as the social media giant is increasingly scrutinized by lawmakers and regulators around the world, particularly in the U.S., over concerns that user data could be passed onto the Chinese government in Beijing.
Several lawmakers in the U.S. have called for the TikTok app to be banned in America.
Earlier this week, a top official at the U.S. communications watchdog, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), said publicly that TikTok should be banned.
TikTok said that while its tries to keep all data secure and private, it does allow some employees within its corporate group to access European user data.
TikTok’s owner ByteDance has not said what it does with the European user data and has repeatedly denied that it is controlled by the Chinese government.
The British Parliament shutdown its TikTok account in August of this year after several Members of Parliament raised concerns about the risk of data being passed onto Chinese authorities.
In June, TikTok said that it had migrated all its U.S. user data to servers run by American software giant Oracle (ORCL) in Austin, Texas.
TikTok is the world’s fastest-growing social media app and has been downloaded about four billion times. Industry data suggests that the privately held social media company has earned more than $6 billion U.S. since it launched in 2017.
