TikTok's Chinese parent company reportedly intended to use the app to surveil specific Americans' locations

• TikTok's parent ByteDance planned to use the app to surveil specific Americans' locations, Forbes reported.
• A China-based team intended to gather location data on at least two specific US users, per the report.

ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of social platform TikTok, planned to use the app to monitor specific US citizens' locations, according to a report by Forbes published on Thursday.

A China-based team at ByteDance, called the Internal Audit and Risk Control department, intended to use TikTok to obtain the location data of at least two Americans who had never been employed by the company, according to Forbes.

The Internal Audit team typically investigates TikTok and ByteDance staffers over violations like misuse of company resources.

Forbes said it did not specify the nature or purpose of the planned monitoring in order to protect its sources, and it's unclear from documents Forbes reviewed whether the data was actually collected.

TikTok said in a statement to Insider that the app would not be able to collect location data.

"Forbes declined to include our direct statement that disproves the feasibility of its core allegation: the TikTok app does not collect precise GPS location information from US users, meaning TikTok could not monitor US users in the way the article suggested," a TikTok spokesperson said, in part. "Furthermore, the company's Internal Audit team has no role in TikTok product development and would not be able to create such functionality."

TikTok is often at the center of privacy and security debates, and Forbes' report is sure to raise more eyebrows. The platform has been the target of both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden's administrations.

Trump threatened to ban the app if it didn't find a US-based buyer, something that never came to fruition. The Biden White House proposed new rules earlier this year that would give the US government more oversight over apps that could be potential national-security risks, such as TikTok.

The Forbes story is the latest in a series of reported scandals for TikTok. BuzzFeed News reported in June, based on leaked audio it obtained, that US user data had been regularly accessed by China-based ByteDance engineers.

TikTok's full statement is below: