U.S. House Official Warns Not to Use ‘High-risk’ TikTok

U.S. House of Representatives Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor issued a statement Wednesday discouraging lawmakers from using TikTok. The statement cited information provided by the U.S. CyberSecurity Office, including that TikTok is a “high-risk” social media application that could jeopardize individuals’ privacy, and that in order to use the platform, users must grant the Chinese company to gain excessive access to personal information.

 “TikTok is a Chinese-owned company, and any use of this platform should be done with that in mind,” the statement read. “The ‘TikTok’ mobile application has been deemed by the CAO Office of CyberSecurity to be a high-risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects customer data, its requirement of excessive permissions, and the potential security risks involved with its use.”

 “TikTok actively harvests content for identifiable data. TikTok ‘may collect biometric identifiers and biometric information as defined under US law,’ including ‘faceprints’ and ‘voiceprints’ from videos users upload to their platform,” the statement continued.

 TikTok, available to millions of Americans through Apple and Google online stores, is owned by the Beijing-based company ByteDance, an organization that is behold to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and required by Chinese law to comply with the PRC’s surveillance demands.