Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) has begun a new investigation into TikTok concerning the storage of European users’ data on servers in China.

This follows TikTok’s announcement in April 2025 that some data had been temporarily stored on Chinese servers.

TikTok had previously assured the DPC that EU data was accessed remotely but not stored in China, a claim contradicted by its February 2025 disclosure.

The DPC, serving as the primary privacy regulator for TikTok in Europe, has expressed concerns about the misleading information provided by the company.

It is consulting with other EU data protection authorities to determine appropriate regulatory actions.

The probe will examine whether TikTok violated the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in transferring data to non-EU countries.

TikTok said it found and deleted the data itself and reported the issue, while the EU does not consider China a country with adequate data protection.

🔗 Source: Reuters

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ Tiktok’s data handling issues reflect a long-standing pattern

TikTok’s latest EU data storage issue is part of a pattern dating back to at least 2019, when the company faced similar allegations about data transfers to China.

A California lawsuit had already alleged TikTok was transferring vast amounts of user data to Chinese servers without consent, including phone usage data and even draft videos not posted on the app 1.

Even then, TikTok maintained it stored user data in Virginia and Singapore, explicitly denying storage on Chinese servers 1.

This consistency in both the allegations and TikTok’s defensive posture highlights the ongoing tensions between the company’s global operations and its Chinese ownership.

The app’s popularity grew rapidly despite these concerns, reaching 1.5 billion users worldwide by late 2019 and becoming the top non-gaming app in the U.S. with 750 million downloads in a single year 12.

2️⃣ Data transfers to China have become a regulatory focal point

Recent TikTok developments