back to article TikTok confirms it tracked journalists' locations as part of leak investigation

Video sharing platform TikTok and its parent company ByteDance are leakier than a sieve – and it has emerged that in an attempt to plug the holes, members of ByteDance's internal audit team tracked the physical location of journalists via their IP addresses. The idea was to check the journalists' proximity, through their …

  1. elsergiovolador Silver badge

    Fauxpitalism

    Why people pretend these companies are actual companies and not foreign hostile government departments dressed as companies?

    CMA should be all over it, as these businesses realistically have access to bottomless pit of money and their goal is not profit, but to advance foreign hostile state agenda.

    I mean profit to an extent too, the foreign military won't build itself just by toiling over teachings of great communists.

    After all they said something along the line that capitalists will sell them rope they get hanged on.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fauxpitalism

      Well thank god EBay was sending pigs heads and death threats to make a profit and not for some other dubious motive.

  2. Richard 12 Silver badge
    WTF?

    Well done

    So because TikTok was annoyed that Forbes had claimed they did an illegal thing, they did exactly the illegal thing Forbes claimed they did, an act that was certain to become known because they knew there were leaks to Forbes.

    Didn't any of the people involved think at all?

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Well done

      Did they also think employees and Forbes journalists would be meeting at the park duckpond to surreptitiously swap identical looking suitcases full of leaked information on paper like some 1970's spy thriller and they would catch them by slurping their location info?

      My flabber is gasted.

      1. TimMaher Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: Park duck pond.

        Made me come over all warm by remembering “The Ipcress File”.

        Mine’s the one with the Minox in the pocket.

        1. David 132 Silver badge
          Thumb Up

          Re: Park duck pond.

          Listen to me. Listen to me, Palmer.

  3. Rikki Tikki

    "Bytedance CEO Rubo Liang said in an internal email: "I was deeply disappointed when I was notified of the situation…"

    I'll paraphrase that: "we're sorry we got caught ..."

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"

  4. HereAndGone

    OMG, Phones Can Be Tracked?

    I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!

    Sky Blue, water wet, phones can be tracked, IP addresses are not private.

    Now about that Santa Clause thing ...

    1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

      Re: OMG, Phones Can Be Tracked?

      Santa Clause? Nah, don't be silly, everyone knows there's no such thing as a sanity clause!

      1. Commswonk

        Re: OMG, Phones Can Be Tracked?

        ...there's no such thing as a sanity clause!

        Take a bow please, Chico Marx.

        (From A Night at the Opera)

        1. Neil Barnes Silver badge
          Pint

          Re: OMG, Phones Can Be Tracked?

          Well spotted sir. Have one of these -->

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    TikTok is shit.

    That is all.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: TikTok is shit.

      Not that bad. When I used it briefly it was good for killing 5 minutes.

  6. jake Silver badge

    ::tee hee::

    And the soap opera continues ...

  7. Yorick Hunt Silver badge
    Big Brother

    Spying for me, not for thee?

    It seems to be all fine when YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google et al do it, but whoa, if it's not the US of A's government behind it, it's very wrong?

    No, I'm not defending TikTok - you'd have to be a cretin to surrender your life to any of these soul cemeteries - but come on, don't act as if none of the other social usurpment platforms aren't doing exactly the same thing.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Spying for me, not for thee?

      But at least the USA is open and honest about using secret national security laws to compel companies to spy for them.

      Those duplicitous foreigners claim that their government owned companies don't work for the government.

      Meanwhile we are safe in the knowledge that our government is so crap at technology it couldn't spy on anyone. (Or at least that's what the MMB want you to think)

      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        How can you be open and honest if you're using secret laws ?

        The only reason we know about the NSA and its egregious abuse of privacy is because of the sacrifice Snowden made.

        There is nothing open, much less honest, about how the NSA has grafted itself into everything "Made in USA" (and abroad).

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Yes, but they were open and honest about harrying him into exile to keep everything else secret.

    2. heyrick Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Spying for me, not for thee?

      Upvote for "soul cemeteries".

  8. razorfishsl

    And if you believe this... i have some highly valuable FTX Crypto currency to sell you.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Bugger the crypto. I want some of whatever it is you give your girlfriend to make her think that having other girlfriends is a good idea.

      In my experience, any suggestion like that, generally ends in broken crockery, and blood dripping off the light fittings.

  9. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Keeping your parts private

    > tracked the physical location of journalists via their IP addresses. ... invasion of privacy.

    An interesting concept. Everyone (those us with technical competence do so knowingly, everyone else: maybe not) hands out their IP address with every network connection we make. It cannot be considered private, though the uses it is put to, might be.

    Provided you don't hand it to an outfit that does not abide by any laws restricting what uses that information can be put to.

    I suppose that ultimately any organization would bend to government pressure to release that stuff, so is there any real privacy to be had?

    1. Craig 2

      Re: Keeping your parts private

      IP addresses are not private, but those with comprehension competence (aka reading the article) would know that using them to track individuals on a pervasive basis IS an invasion of privacy. Your physical location isn't really private, but following a specific person around 24hrs a day is also an invasion of privacy.

  10. Ball boy Silver badge

    Migrating to Oracle?

    Oh, that makes it all okay then: we all know Oracle's DB can't store IP addresses - so there's no chance of this kind of thing ever happening again and it'll all benefit from perfect oversight in the future.

    Banned from Government devices? I'd suggest the last three words in that sentence need redacting.

  11. Twanky
    Megaphone

    Oh no...

    Someone tried to track the physical location of *journalists*!

    No journalist would ever stoop so low as to try to do something like that.

    The double standards are sickening.

  12. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "with good reason, if these revelations are anything to go by"

    The only good reason any government needs is that TikTok is not useful for conducting government business on government-owned and operated hardware.

    That TikTok kowtows to Beijing is irrelevant to the issue.

  13. PhilipN Silver badge

    Scandal …. bombshell …

    Brief moment there I thought I was accessing the Daily Mail by mistake.

  14. Sp1z

    Something’s not right here

    They were using IP addresses? To track location?

    I’ve just turned off my VPN and it says i’m in Rochester. I’m not. Turn off my WiFi as well and it says i’m in West London. I’m not.

    I guess they might be able to tell if a journalist and a staffer were on the same WiFi network, or they *might* be geo-mapping SSIDs like Google did, but surely there isn’t anywhere near enough accuracy to pinpoint these interactions?

    Could it possibly be that their app has GPS permission and they’re using that? In which case why would any journalist worth their salt have TikTok installed on a device they left switched on while they met up with a staffer to get a story about TikTok?

    Doesn’t make sense.

    1. trindflo Silver badge

      Re: Something’s not right here

      @Sp1z you comment that "I’ve just turned off my VPN and it says i’m in Rochester".

      I can't tell what you mean by "it". I'm guessing you are using a website to return your location. If that is the case then that website is not going to much effort and is likely just finding the location of your ISP. Using a program like traceroute would give you better information, and you can get more accurate than traceroute if you spend the money, time and effort.

      1. werdsmith Silver badge

        Re: Something’s not right here

        I sometimes enter my login details for certain services and receive a text message saying that someone has just logged into my account in z location.

        Though it’s obviously me, x location is sometimes 200 miles away. ISP has a big old network and chooses to break me out of their network to the public internet somewhere random.

        1. Mr. Flibble

          Re: Something’s not right here

          No, it's because the "certain services" must be using an out of date GeoIP database, and your actual public internet isn't changing at all.....

          I get it all the time, but as the error is meant for lusers, it doesn't give enough details to be useful in actually checking whether your account is actually compromised.

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