TikTok, the popular video-sharing app owned by China's ByteDance Ltd., revealed certain employees outside of the US had access to data from US users.
The revelation has raised further criticism from lawmakers who have expressed concern about the social network's data-sharing policies.
The firm's admission was sent in a letter to nine US senators, who had accused TikTok and its parent of monitoring US citizens.
The letter state that some China-based employees that pass a number of internal security protocols, can access US users' public videos and comments.
However, they claim that no information is shared with the Chinese government.
"TikTok's response confirms our fears about the CCP's influence in the company were well founded. The Chinese-run company should have come clean from the start, but it attempted to shroud its work in secrecy. Americans need to know if they are on TikTok, Communist China has their information."
- Marsha Blackburn, Republican Senator of Tennessee
The firm is collaborating with the US government on "Project Texas," which entails physically storing US data on US servers, owned by Oracle Corp.
TikTok is also moving its platform to Oracle's cloud infrastructure, which implies the app and the algorithm can be deployed for US users from domestic data centers.
