Chinese-owned social media website TikTok instructed US senators it was engaged on a closing settlement with the Biden Administration that might “fully safeguard user data and US national security interests,” in keeping with a letter seen Friday by Reuters.

TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew instructed senators in a letter dated Thursday that the quick video app was working with Oracle on “new advanced data security controls that we hope to finalise in the near future.” Last month, TikTok mentioned it had accomplished migrating data on its US customers to servers at Oracle however it was nonetheless utilizing US and Singapore knowledge centres for backup.

TikTok’s letter acknowledged that China-based staff “can have access to TikTok US user data subject to a series of robust cybersecurity controls and authorisation approval protocols overseen by our US-based security team.” TikTok mentioned because it continues to work on knowledge points it expects “to delete US users protected data from our own systems and fully pivot to Oracle cloud servers located in the US.”

A TikTok spokesperson confirmed the corporate despatched a response to the senators’ letter. “We look forward to connecting with Members of congress to discuss the substance of our letter,” the spokesperson mentioned in a press release to Reuters.

Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn mentioned TikTok “should have come clean from the start but instead tried to shroud their work in secrecy. Americans need to know that if they are on TikTok, Communist China has their information. TikTok needs to come back and testify before Congress.”

The letter comes practically two years after a US nationwide safety panel ordered dad or mum firm ByteDance to divest TikTok due to fears that US person knowledge might be handed on to China’s communist authorities.

“We know we are among the most scrutinised platforms from a security standpoint and we aim to remove any doubt about the security of US user data,” the letter mentioned.

TikTok is among the world’s hottest social media apps, with greater than 1 billion lively customers globally, and counts the United States as its largest market.

© Thomson Reuters 2022