Chinese video-sharing platform TikTok has told users that some of its workers in China have access to the data of accounts in the UK and European Union.
The social media giant said the "privacy policy" was "based on a demonstrated need to do their job".
It has come under scrutiny from authorities around the world, including the UK and US, over concerns data could be passed to the Chinese government.
Earlier this week, a US official called for the app to be banned in America.
TikTok said the policy applies to "the European Economic Area, United Kingdom and Switzerland".
Elaine Fox, the platform's head of privacy for Europe, said in a statement on Wednesday that a global team helped to keep the user experience "consistent, enjoyable and safe".
Although TikTok currently stores European user data in the US and Singapore, "we allow certain employees within our corporate group located in Brazil, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States remote access to TikTok European user data," Ms Fox said.
"Our efforts are centred on limiting the number of employees with access to European user data, minimising data flows outside of the region, and storing European user data locally," she added.
She also said the approach was "subject to a series of robust security controls and approval protocols, and by way of methods that are recognised under the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)".
It came in the same week that a top official at the US communications watchdog said TikTok should be banned in America.
"I don't believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban," said Brendan Carr, a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
He added that he believed there was not "a world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient confidence that it's not finding its way back into the hands of the [Chinese Communist Party]."
TikTok's owner ByteDance has repeatedly denied it is controlled by the Chinese government.
The app has come under intense scrutiny by authorities in the UK, EU and US.
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