TikTok Moves Its American Users Data to Oracle Clouds

The main concern about TikTok among the Americans was that the Chinese origins of it. To comply with data safety requirements, TikTok had to root down in the United States and minimize its ties with China. Now, the next step is transferring user data to cloud structures by Oracle; this will supposedly prevent any data leaks to the Chinese government.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States paid attention to TikTok as its popularity in America was growing. Now the app is used by 80 million Americans, making it a great tool for collecting data; even seemingly innocent details may be a key to important insights. Though the decision to oblige Bytedance to divest TikTok was made back in 2020, it’s only now that its implementation starts.

To response to these (quite reasonable) fears, TikTok now migrates to Oracle clouds which will add to its credibility and reduce the chance of leaking. Previously, TikTok used its own data centers, and whilw one of them was in Virginia, another was in Singapore, beyond American jurisdiction. But now the data will be removed from these. Months earlier, it was discussed that Oracle could become a shareholder of TikTok. And though ultimately this didn’t happen, there is still a full-scale collaboration between the two giants.

The measures could have been harsher. The enormous popularity of TikTok, though, prevented it from being banned (unlike, say, in India), but it still attracted the attention of security bodies. It may result in further severing the American branch of TikTok from its Chinese parent.

Are you concerned about your data stored by TikTok or other obviously Chinese apps? Do you think the migration solves the issue, or are there more actions required? If you have an idea to share, you can share it in the comments!