According to Forbes' initial report from October, ByteDance has admitted that it used TikTok to track the physical locations of journalists using their IP addresses. This is how TikTok spied on Forbes journalists.
ByteDance, the parent company of video-sharing platform TikTok, conducted an internal investigation and discovered that employees monitored multiple journalists trying to cover the company, wrongfully getting access to their IP addresses and user data in an endeavor to determine whether they had been in the same locations as ByteDance employees.
According to documents reviewed by Forbes, ByteDance tracked many Forbes journalists as part of this clandestine surveillance program, which was intended to uncover the origin of leaks within the company in the aftermath of a barrage of stories exposing the company's continuous ties to China. ByteDance terminated Chris Lepitak, its chief internal auditor who headed the group responsible for the monitoring measures, as a res...