TikTok announced a series of measures to strengthen privacy and try to allay growing distrust of regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. Video platform owned by the Chinese giant byte dance will start storing locally data European citizens
The Clover Project will open two new projects this way. data centers on the territory of the European Union (EU). One will be in Dublin, Irelandwhere a similar headquarters already exists and where the company’s offices are located Europe. The other will be at: Norway, more specifically in the Hamar region. It is currently unknown which company will manage these centers, but TikTok sources confirm that it will be a European provider.
Until now, European user data was stored on servers in the USA, with backups in Singapore. The transition to European servers, which started in 2021, will continue until next year. So Europe will be the default location for this data. This change meant a total annual investment of 1,200 million euros.
restraint wave
TikTok’s strategic move is responding to the increasing restrictions being put in place. application. On 23 February, the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council, applications inside mobile from their staff. But four days later, it was the Canadian government that made the same decision. Both measures preceded what happened. United States of AmericaWhere the use of TikTok is banned on all federal government devices, as well as in more than half of the country’s states. Spain has not yet followed that path.
In all these cases, the wave of bans is responding to the fear of officials who believe TikTok could serve the United States. espionage related to Chinese. While this alleged backdoor has yet to be proven, the scandal sparked by the revelation that employees were using TikTok to monitor Forbes reporters didn’t help the company.
In November, TikTok stated that its employees in up to 10 countries can manage data from European users. The company emphasized today that it will reduce data transfer outside the region and employee access to this data. “Any access to data will not be in compliance with US law alone. protection but it will have to go through these additional security gateways and checks first.”
Announced this Tuesday, the change will affect EU citizens as well as citizens of the UK, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. More than 150 million people in these countries use TikTok every month.