TikTok faces fresh European privacy investigation over China data transfers

By KELVIN CHAN LONDON AP TikTok is facing a fresh European Union privacy analysis into user records sent to China regulators disclosed Thursday Related Articles Ford recalls over cars in the US due to prospective fuel pump failure What I learned from my first meeting with a financial advisor What to know and what isn t known yet about US tax deductions for tips and overtime pay Chicago firm makes th St Paul acquisition with Degree of Honor apartments Average long-term US mortgage rate rises to ending a five-week slide The Statistics Protection Commission opened the inquiry as a follow up to a previous scrutiny that ended earlier this year with a million euro million fine after it unveiled the video sharing app put users at threat of spying by allowing remote access their details 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 analysis TikTok initially narrated the regulator it didn t store European user evidence in China and that information was only accessed remotely by staff in China However it later backtracked and reported that several statistics had in fact been stored on Chinese servers The watchdog responded at the time by saying it would consider further regulatory action As a effect of that consideration the DPC has now decided to open this new inquiry into TikTok the watchdog declared 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 Content 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 safety liability TikTok noted that it was one that notified the Statistics Protection Commission after it embarked on a records localization project called Project Clover that involved building three content centers in Europe to ease measure concerns Our teams proactively discovered this issue through the comprehensive monitoring TikTok implemented under Project Clover the company announced in a comment We promptly deleted this minimal amount of records from the servers and informed the DPC Our proactive description to the DPC underscores our commitment to transparency and information defense Under GDPR European user details 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 material privacy standard as the EU but China is not one of them