TikTok Prompts EU Watchdog’s Warning on Data Being Sent to China

(Bloomberg) -- TikTok, the Chinese-owned video-sharing app, may be sending some European Union user data to China, its main data-protection watchdog in the EU warned.

“TikTok tells us that EU data is transferred to the U.S. and not to China, however we have understood that there is possibility that maintenance and AI engineers in China may be accessing data,” Irish Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon said at an online event Wednesday.

ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok is facing scrutiny in the EU over how it handles children’s personal information. The Irish regulator in December became the lead EU data protection authority for TikTok.

The authority has dozens of other privacy probes open into Facebook Inc. and other Silicon Valley tech giants, who have all set up an EU hub in Ireland.

TikTok didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

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