Is TikTok sending data to China? Latest Citizen Lab research says probably not

New research findings say that TikTok does not display ‘overtly malicious behaviour’ and is not a threat to US national security. Researchers find no evidence of censorship in TikTok but its sister app Douyin restricts some politically sensitive keywords. — SCMP

TikTok, the short video-sharing app owned by Chinese company ByteDance, does not pose a national security threat to the US, a new study by the University of Toronto-affiliated research group Citizen Lab concluded, as the Biden administration continues to review the potential risks posed by Chinese apps to determine whether they should be banned.

In a report published on Monday, the Citizen Lab said it found no “overt data transmission” by TikTok to the Chinese government since the app did not contact any servers located in China during its testing. However, researchers did not rule out the possibility that user data gathered outside of China could be sent to the country later.