The first to advance the information was the journalist Emily Baker-White, from Forbes, one of the two communicators whose data was obtained irregularly by several ByteDance employees, who they were fired after the company itself recognized the eventin December of last year.
According to the outlet, which cites sources with knowledge of the investigation, The FBI has also conducted interviews about what happened.or, although it does not clarify whether both investigations are related.
The New York Times newspaper confirmed this Friday the Justice Department investigation, which according to its sources was launched at the end of last year. In December, The Chinese company said in a statement that it “firmly” condemned the actions of the employees and that they no longer worked for the company. In addition, he promised to collaborate with any investigation that could trigger the event.
The European Union has banned the TikTok application on official mobile devices
The employees allegedly accessed data such as the IP addresses of both journalists and several of their contacts while trying to determine if there had been any leaks of documents and internal conversations, reports The New York Times.
The news comes at a time when US and European authorities are hardening their stance on the TikTok social network, for fear that it could be used to collect data that ends up in the hands of the Chinese government.
Last February, both the European Commission and the Council of the European Union announced that they would veto the popular application from official mobile devices, after which the White House gave US federal agencies 30 days to remove the social network from all government electronic devices.
