HONG KONG – The computer code under TikTok is not a national security threat to the U.S., according to a new study by university cybersecurity researchers.
Published Monday by the University of Toronto’s cybersecurity group Citizen Lab, the report comes after government officials in several countries, including the administration of former President Donald Trump, suggested that the a famous short video app in China to help Beijing in spying abroad.
Citizen Lab, which distributes regular reports on censorship and scrutiny by Chinese social media apps, found no evidence of “malicious behavior” following a technical study of TikTok, owned by ByteDance Ltd. in Beijing.
The app, built around addictive algorithms that serve streams of short videos, is no more annoying than Facebook when it comes to data collection, the researchers found.
The researchers warned that there could be security issues that they did not detect. They also said the Chinese government could use “non-controversial methods” to force ByteDance to release data using the country’s national security laws.