WASHINGTON, December 23 – RIA Novosti. According to the newspaper’s report, the Chinese company ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, admitted that its employees illegally obtained the data of many social network users, including two journalists. New York Times.

According to the publication, the company said an internal investigation found that employees “illegally obtained data from US TikTok users, including two reporters.”

The newspaper explains that over the summer, several members of the ByteDance team responsible for monitoring employee behavior sought to find sources regarding the alleged leak of internal conversations and business documents to journalists. As part of these efforts, the publication said the two reporters and a small number of others had access to their IP addresses and other data.

It was noted that the results of the investigation were announced by ByteDance General Counsel Erich Andersen. The company said all four employees who gained unauthorized access to user data were laid off (two of them worked in the US and two in China).

According to the publication, the reporters whose data were accessed are Emily Baker-White, who previously wrote for BuzzFeed and now works for Forbes, and Christina Criddle of the Financial Times.

Earlier, the US Senate passed a bill that would ban TikTok from being installed on federal government electronic devices. The use of the popular app for creating and watching short videos has also been banned by civil servants in many US states. A provision has been added to the US 2023 budget proposal that prohibits TikTok from being used by government employees.

TikTok is a short video creation and viewing application owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. Launched in 2018, it has become the segment leader in China and is gaining popularity worldwide.