January 12, 2024
Friday 12 January 2024
Geoff Chambers and Simon Benson
The Australian
Chinese-owned social media giant TikTok has accused the Coalition of waging a war against its users after opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson threatened to name and shame Australian companies who use the platform’s data-tracking code.
The Liberal frontbencher has written to prominent Australian companies asking whether they are still using the TikTok pixel, when they ceased using the code and if they have sought legal advice to continue using the tracking technology.
Senator Paterson has given companies until Friday to respond and warned them that “I intend to publish responses, or lack thereof”.
In his letter, the Victorian Liberal senator raised concerns that the TikTok Pixel, as it calls the code, was being embedded by Australian companies to “collect information on their visitors, including phone numbers, email addresses, browsing history and shopping habits”.
“Concerningly, the reports (in The Sydney Morning Herald) suggested this information was being harvested from Australians prior to them giving consent for the information to be collected. In addition, TikTok was capturing this information on all website visitors, not just TikTok users,” Senator Paterson wrote.
“This would be of concern from any company, but is particularly worrying from TikTok, which is owned by its China-based parent company, ByteDance, and has previously admitted that its China-based employees regularly access Australian user data.
“These employees are subject to China’s national security and intelligence laws, which require them to co-operate with Chinese government intelligence agencies, and to keep that co-operation secret. It means any data collected by TikTok on Australians could be handed over to the Chinese Communist Party without Australians ever knowing.”
Following concerns raised about the TikTok Pixel last month, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner launched a preliminary probe into how the Chinese-owned company harvests personal data via its pixel. The Albanese government banned the TikTok app from “devices issued by Commonwealth departments and agencies” on April 4 last year.
Ahead of Senator Paterson’s January 12 deadline for companies, TikTok on Thursday wrote to the Liberal frontbencher accusing him of having a “fundamental misunderstanding as to how TikTok’s Pixel operates”.
The company has defended the tracking code, which they say operates in a similar way as the Meta pixel and Google tag.
TikTok Australia public policy director Ella Woods-Joyce told Senator Paterson “we are disappointed that you seem to have attempted to interfere with lawful matters of trade and business, particularly in such a threatening way, and when the basis for doing so is misconceived”.
“As a business with hundreds of hardworking Australian employees, providing a platform used by more than 8.5 million Australians and more than 350,000 Australian businesses, we request that you stop misrepresenting our business. Our offer to brief you on any matter about how TikTok operates continues to stand,” Ms Woods-Joyce wrote.
“We are concerned by your request for businesses to, without any warning, waive a fundamental legal right – i.e., a business’s right to legal professional privilege – by disclosing the existence of legal advice they may have received, to you as a third party; and … the implicit threat that a failure to remove the Pixel or confirm the existence of sensitive privileged legal advice would result in the company being publicly ‘named and shamed’.”
Ms Woods-Joyce told Senator Paterson that TikTok’s Pixel, used by “high-profile, trusted Australian businesses”, complied with the Privacy Act and the “implication that the pixel is designed to surreptitiously collect data from unsuspecting individuals without notification is false”.
“As far as we are aware, no complaint has been made by any person to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner about TikTok Pixel. The OAIC has not published any determinations or decisions which state that TikTok has breached, or even may have breached, Australian privacy legislation.
“The OAIC has not opened an investigation into whether TikTok may have breached privacy legislation. To be clear, the only thing the OAIC has decided is to make some preliminary inquiries to learn more about how the Pixel works in light of some misinformation circulating about the Pixel.”
Senator Paterson on Thursday told The Australian: “I wish we could rely on TikTok’s word, but unfortunately they have repeatedly lied in the past.”
“TikTok is not a company who can be trusted, and that’s why it’s very welcome the OAIC has launched an inquiry into their apparent privacy abuses against Australians,” Senator Paterson said.
“They said they would never spy on journalists. Then they admitted they had. They said our data was safe because it is stored in Singapore and the US. Then they admitted it was regularly accessed by their China-based employees.”
