IRISH DATA REGULATOR OPENS INQUIRY INTO TIKTOK OVER DATA – TikTok admits EU user data stored in China
Ireland’s powerful Data Protection Commission has opened a new inquiry into TikTok over the storage of European users’ data in China after the short-video platform disclosed in April that some data had temporarily been stored on Chinese servers.
TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, was in May fined 530 million euros by the Irish commissioner over concerns on how it protects European users’ information, some of which is remotely accessed by staff in China.
The new inquiry, by TikTok’s lead regulator in the EU as its European headquarters is located in Ireland, will look specifically at the storage of data in China, which was not considered in the previous probe.
The Irish regulator said in May that while TikTok had told it throughout the four-year inquiry that it did not store EU data in China, it disclosed in April that it had discovered two months earlier that a limited amount of data was stored in China and had since been deleted.
TikTok is appealing the May 2 decision and said the ruling risked setting a precedent with far-reaching consequences for companies and entire industries across Europe that operate on a global scale.
