Tiktok opens European data center in Ireland Descendants of dead bear found in Italian park

Short video service Tiktok has opened a new data center in Ireland to allay fears over access to European user data from China. Tiktok announced on Tuesday that data from users in Europe was being transferred there. Another data center in Ireland and one in Norway are still under construction. By the end of 2024, European user data should be moved there and stored by default.

Tiktok wants to gain trust in Europe with the plan called ‘Project Clover’. The popular video app has a difficult political status in the West because it is owned by the Chinese group Bytedance. The European Commission and several European governments have banned the use of the app on their employees’ mobile phones.

With ‘Project Clover’, Tiktok wants to guarantee that access to the personal data of European users is strictly regulated and transparent. British IT security firm NCC will oversee the system as an independent technical partner. Among other things, she will monitor the data flows and any problems she discovers must be reported in Tiktok’s quarterly transparency reports. In the US, Tiktok is trying to use a similar system to address the government’s fierce concerns.

Data from European users has so far been stored in Singapore and the US. There are concerns in the West that the app could be misused by Chinese authorities to collect information about users. Tiktok always dismisses such concerns, emphasizing that they have never received and will not comply with data requests from the Chinese government because there is no legal basis for doing so. Now it was again said that protected user data would “never” be sent to China.

Attempts are being made in the US to create a legal basis for tougher action against apps classified as risky, up to and including a ban. i (sda/awp/dpa)