TikTok says its American traffic is going through Oracle servers, but it retains backups.

TikTok, the Chinese-owned online video app, said on Friday that it was transferring all of the data developed by its American users via servers controlled by Oracle, the Silicon Valley firm, in a bid to persuade the U.S. federal government that it will not expose the private information and facts of Americans to the Chinese governing administration.

But TikTok extra that it would however store its possess backups of that information, probably complicating individuals endeavours.

The application, which is owned by the Chinese enterprise ByteDance, reported in a blog put up that it anticipated to inevitably delete American users’ “private details from our very own info centers and totally pivot to Oracle cloud servers located” in the United States. It did not say when that would acquire area.

“For much more than a year, we’ve been operating with Oracle on many measures as element of our business connection to greater safeguard our application, techniques, and the security of U.S. user information,” Albert Calamug, who performs for TikTok’s public plan division, mentioned in the write-up.

The movie application made its announcement right before BuzzFeed News released an short article detailing how TikTok staff felt it was tricky to effectively wall off its information from China. In accordance to recordings the information outlet explained it experienced acquired, TikTok workforce reported Chinese engineers experienced access to American info as recently as this calendar year.

“As we’ve publicly said, we have brought in globe class interior and external protection professionals to assist us reinforce our data security initiatives,” TikTok reported in a statement. The business extra that it had designed a device in May well, led from the United States, to “provide a bigger amount of aim and governance” on Americans’ knowledge stability.

In 2020, President Donald J. Trump ordered ByteDance to market TikTok over worries it could expose the personalized facts of Us citizens to Beijing. When the White Household was explained to have reached a deal to promote component of the application to Oracle and other people, it in no way came to fruition. The Biden administration has continued scrutinizing TikTok and other options for Chinese firms to management American details.

A White Residence spokeswoman did not reply to a request for comment. A spokesman for the Treasury Division, which is a member of the committee that vets international financial commitment in the United States, declined to remark. Oracle also declined to remark.