TikTok is working to guarantee that EU data does not enter China

Popular video app TikTok is working in Europe to ensure user data doesn’t end up in China. With this, the social media platform is responding to, among others, a move by the European Commission and the European Parliament to ban the use from business devices of its own employees.

TikTok is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance and has come under fire since the company admitted some employees had access to users’ data in the US and Europe. More and more governments and parliaments are banning TikTok from their employees’ workplace phones and other business devices for fear of data theft and spying.

Theo Bertram, vice president of European public policy at TikTok, acknowledged there were “real concerns” among Western governments about China. “I think there’s a greater obligation on us to demonstrate how we’re going to protect users’ data.”

According to him, Tiktok will work in Europe as well as in America. In that country, where TikTok is not allowed on the mobile phones and tablets of many civil servants, a special agreement was signed with Oracle. That company ensures that US user data is stored on servers in the US and never leaves the country.

“We are working on three new data centers and we will be working with a partner,” Bertram says of the approach in Europe, without giving further details without naming the partner. TikTok has around 150 million users in Europe, of which 25 million are in the United Kingdom. The app has more than a billion users worldwide.