The popular video app TikTok is working in Europe to ensure that user data doesn’t just end up in China. With this, the social media platform is responding to the actions of, among others, the European Commission and the European Parliament to ban the app from its own staff business devices.

TikTok is owned by Chinese technology company ByteDance and has come under fire since the company acknowledged that certain employees had access to user data in the United States and Europe. More and more governments and parliaments are banning TikTok on their employees’ work phones and other business devices out of fear of data theft and espionage.

Theo Bertram, vice president of European public policy at TikTok, acknowledged that there is “genuine concern” among Western governments about China. “I think there is a higher obligation on us to demonstrate how we secure user data.”

Three new data centers

According to him, TikTok will work in Europe in the same way as in the United States. In that country, where TikTok is no longer allowed on many civil servants’ phones and tablets, a special deal has been signed with Oracle. The company ensures that American users’ data is stored on servers within the United States itself and does not leave the country.

“We are working on three new data centers and we will also work with partners,” Bertram said of the approach in Europe, without naming partners and providing further details. TikTok has around 150 million users in Europe, 25 million of which are in the UK. This app has more than one billion users worldwide.