Australian-US cyber security company Internet 2.0 has said that the company owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is harvesting large amounts of data from its users including intimate details such as when you last visited the doctor, passwords as well as credit card details. The report noted, “The application can and will run successfully without any of this data being gathered. This leads us to believe that the only reason this information has been gathered is for data harvesting". 

Liberal senator and opposition cyber security spokesperson as well as member of Australian Parliament's Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, James Paterson has since called for a ban on the most popular social media app of the year. Speaking to local news source The Oz, Paterson reiterated, "A ban should be on the table... we don't want to wake up in a conflict scenario and think we need to protect our cyber security". 

The app has more than 2.5 million active users in Australia.