BY SYDNEY WESCHCKE
STAFF WRITER
A few hours before the ban on TikTok was to take place, a federal judge blocked the ban. The main reason for the ban was the “immediate danger” of TikTok being owned by a company located in Beijing, China. The Trump administration is concerned that the Chinese Government could be able to access millions of American’s information. The app was set to be removed from the app store on September 20; along with more restrictions going into place on November 12.
TikTok was set to be partnered with Oracle and Walmart; this has not been finalized yet as of the end of September. Microsoft has also shared interest in purchasing or partnering with TikTok. This would lower the national security threat, due to both those companies being located in the U.S.
One solution to this ongoing security threat problem would be to use synthetic data. This is a way to make your data accurate but still anonymous. It would change some information about the person. For example, it could change their birthday by a couple months or days. Also, it would completely keep any addresses or other private information safe. In this way, TikTok could still be partially owned by ByteDance, and there wouldn’t be a security threat. It would also be safe if a U.S. company owned or partnered with TikTok.
Sources
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/27/tech/tiktok-ban-judge/index.html