Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed twin executive orders that ostensibly would bar the apps from U.S. distribution, as the Associated Press reported. The orders were scheduled to take effect in 45 days, although U.S. experts questioned their legality. The Chinese government slammed the measures as “political manipulation.”
TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, boasts 100 million U.S. users—and hundreds of million globally—for its silly, short-form viral videos. Tencent’s WeChat, or Weixin in Chinese, is a messaging and social media app with one billion users. For many people, it’s a vital tool to communicate with relatives and businesses in mainland China.
TikTok has insisted that it doesn’t keep American data in China—or share it with the Chinese government. According to cybersecurity experts, TikTok isn’t so different from American-owned tech giants Facebook or Google when it comes to the type and amount of data that’s collected. Cybersecurity researcher Baptiste Robert told Newsweek, “in its current state, TikTok doesn’t have suspicious behavior and is not exfiltrating unusual data.”
Still, Guy Garrett, assistant director of the Center for Cybersecurity at the University of West Florida, told the Tampa Bay Times that even Facebook- and Google-level data profiles could theoretically be used for blackmail. He added that the risk factor increases for apps developed in countries “that are not friendly to the United States.”
As CNN reports, other experts have described the security risks from WeChat as far wider in scope. Cybersecurity observers in the Tibetan exile community have cited the spread of WeChat as a factor in the decline in hacks against community members in the past few years. “I don’t think they need to hack systems as much as they used to because that information is already being given to them [through WeChat],” said Tibetan cyber expert Lobsang Gyatso Sither.
Chinese prosecutors have cited evidence from WeChat, including deleted messages. The app’s maker has repeatedly said it doesn’t spy on users. Samm Sacks, a China and cybersecurity expert at think tank New America, said that anything shared on WeChat is probably being monitored by Beijing.