TikTok denies it might be used to track US citizens
TikTok has denied a report that a China-based team at its parent company ByteDance planned to use the app to trace the locations of US citizens.
The social media giant said on Twitter that it's never been used to "target" the American government, activists, public figures or journalists.
The firm also says it doesn't collect precise location data from US users.
It was responding to a report in Forbes that data would have been accessed without users' knowledge or consent.
The US business magazine, which cited documents it had seen, reported that ByteDance had started a monitoring project to research misconduct by current and former employees.
It said the project, which was travel by a Beijing-based team, had planned to gather location data from a US citizen on at least two occasions.
The report said it had been unclear whether American citizens' data was ever collected but there had been a plan to obtain location data from US users' devices.
TikTok to ban children from livestreaming
Why people are posting their salaries on TikTok
In a series of tweets TikTok's communications team said the report lacked "both rigor and journalistic integrity".
It added that "Forbes chose to not include the portion of our statement that disproved the feasibility of its core allegation: TikTok does not collect precise GPS location information from US users, meaning TikTok couldn't monitor US users in the way the article suggested."
In response to a BBC request for comment a Forbes spokesperson said: "We are confident in our sourcing, and that we stand by our reporting."
Privacy concerns
The developers of apps have come under scrutiny from authorities round the world, especially over the info of military and intelligence personnel.
In 2020, a US national security panel ordered ByteDance to sell TikTok's American business over concerns that users' data might be passed to the Chinese government.
TikTok said it migrated US users' information to servers at Austin-headquartered Oracle this June, to deal with some regulatory issues.
Meanwhile, TikTok is facing a £27m ($30m) fine within the UK, for failing to guard the privacy of children using the platform.
Last month, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office found that the video-sharing platform may have processed the info of under-13s without appropriate consent.
The watchdog said the breach happened over more than two years - until July 2020 - but that it had not yet drawn final conclusions.
Tiktok has disputed the findings and said they were "provisional".
TikTok is that the world's fastest-growing social media app and has been downloaded more than 3.9 billion times.
It has made more than $6.2bn (£5.5bn) in gross sales from in-app spending since its launch in 2017, consistent with analytics company Sensor Tower.