Some American users don't understand why the U.S. might see TikTok as a security threat

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday, March 23, 2023, in Washington.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday, March 23, 2023, in Washington. Photo credit Jack Gruber / USA Today Network

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — While members of Congress grilled TikTok’s chief executive Shou Chew on Thursday over concerns about the app’s ability to glean multitudes of data about its users and share it with the Chinese government, some users seem to be unaware of how information is collected and stored or why it's important.

The five-hour House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, titled "TikTok: How Congress can Safeguard American Data Privacy and Protect Children from Online Harms," comes as part of the growing scrutiny of the popular short-video sharing app's ability to secure its data.

Fox School of Business information systems professor Jason Thatcher says there’s a lot of value for the company in knowing what catches people’s attention and for how long. And he says it’s significant that a Chinese TikTok executive is sitting for questioning in front of US lawmakers.

“What it suggests is that there's a serious concern on the part of cybersecurity professionals that something might go wrong with how people's data is being managed by this particular company,” he said.

Underlying the issue is that many users seem to misunderstand the information that could pose a threat. Some say they don’t mind if companies or governments know what kinds of videos they like to watch.

“The things that they would track, I'm fine with people knowing,” said one user. “Like, I love cooking videos. I was watching the cooking videos on Tiktok. So if I look up a recipe online, I started getting a bunch more cooking videos. That's not something I feel would be vital for like other governments to use.”

Another TikTok user said that if the seemingly harmless app posed a real threat to national security, it would have been banned. But that’s exactly the potential outcome American lawmakers are contemplating.

Many users who don’t sense a security threat in their daily lives may not fully understand how their data could pose a wider threat. Thatcher says TikTok doesn’t care that you like cooking videos.

“Most of these big companies, they're not making their money by you watching the video. They're making their money on processing the data you generate so people can more effectively target advertising at you.”

And because TikTok is a Chinese company, Thatcher says, what worries lawmakers is the possibility that the Chinese government could access user data to spy on Americans and spread misinformation.

Thatcher says TikTok user data might not be useful for decades. And then: “The terms of use to the legal framework in China says if the government comes to TikTok and says, ‘Hey, you've got this data stored in China,’ they have a right to look at it.”

Information TikTok users thought was safe could be used as an entry point into American companies’ networks.

“All I need is one person to breach. I need one person to share a password in an organization of thousands. And once I get into the network — if it's a skilled cyber criminal, they can do a lot,” he said.

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