On June 17, 2022, BuzzFeed reported that audio leaks of TikTok internal conversations revealed that China-based employees from TikTok parent’s company ByteDance repeatedly accessed private data belonging to American TikTok users. According to those leaks, some ByteDance employees had access to US data between September 2021 and January 2022. According to Forbes, ByteDance’s Internal Audit and Risk Control department planned to use the TikTok app to monitor American citizens’ location. Following the leaks, a ByteDance team tried to find the sources of the suspected leaks to determine whether they were connected to ByteDance employees.