​An internal investigation by the ByteDance group, which owns the TikTok network, revealed that four employees in China and the United States gained access to journalists’ accounts to find out which people in the company gave them confidential information about what was happening on TikTok.

TikTok says the four employees found guilty have been fired. They gained access to the accounts of two journalists – one from the Financial Times and the other from Buzzfeed – journalists who were working on investigations related to what is happening at TikTok and how employees are treated.

Four people from TikTok abused their position and illegally gained access to journalists’ accounts to find out IP address data and other information, the idea was to find out if the journalists were in the same place as TikTok employees at a certain time. The goal was to find out who are the employees who give journalists data about what is happening inside the company.

For example, a Financial Times journalist wrote several articles starting in June about how TikTok bosses treat their people in the London office: there were cases when they worked more than 12 hours a day, employees who went on vacation were demoted , and the manager in Europe was replaced after the Financial Times published an article that the manager “doesn’t believe in maternity leave.”

In addition to the accounts of the two journalists, it was also possible to gain access to the accounts of several users associated with them.

The investigation began after the article in Forbes and in many ways confirms what was written in this article.

Sources: New York Times, Financial Times

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