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TikTok Isn’t a Threat to U.S. National Security: Researchers

Citizen Lab’s analysis uncovered zero evidence of “overtly malicious behavior” in the code of the Chinese-owned app.

A team of cybersecurity researchers who analyzed TikTok’s code found no evidence of “overtly malicious behavior”—and determined the Chinese-owned app collects about as much user data as Facebook. Citizen Lab cautioned that there may still be security issues that didn’t crop up during the analysis, but they remain unaware of any “immediate security issues with TikTok.” The app, which is owned by the Chinese tech company ByteDance, has come under scrutiny after former President Donald Trump and other officials alleged its data-collection practices could help China spy on U.S. citizens and those of other countries. But the Citizen Lab study found that “TikTok and Facebook collect similar amounts of user data,” and there is “no overt data transmission to the Chinese government by TikTok.” “Data collection on TikTok behaves much like Facebook and other popular social platforms and shares the same privacy issues these apps have,” the study determined.