There is no stone left unturned when you get in the US government crosshairs, and when you are as high profile as TikTok, the scrutiny sooner or later unearths a wrongdoing or two. The popular short and often funny videos sharing app is getting into its next round of hot water, and is following a familiar press coverage path, one that we witnessed with Huawei, and which ended up in an Android ban on its phones.

While it’s a long road from collecting identifiers like MAC addresses for marketing and advertising purposes which seems to be a common practice where TikTok’s parent company originates from, the revelation comes at a bad time for the app.

The US has set its sight on its growing popularity among US teens, and has decided that it is next on the chopping block altar of the geopolitical struggle between the two countries. TikTok’s claims that it actually collects less data than Facebook and even Google, which nobody in the government seems to have a problem with, will most likely fall on dead ears, and it may ultimately be forced to divest its US business. 

Apple already denied interest, but Microsoft and Twitter are reportedly circling the wagons around the idea for a TikTok US acquisition. For what it’s worth, TikTok says that it is “committed to protecting the privacy and safety of the TikTok community. Like our peers, we constantly update our app to keep up with evolving security challenges, the current version of TikTok does not collect MAC addresses.”

This is unlikely to take the administration’s China hawks off its back, though, and one of those, Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), is already on record commenting the just-in-time WSJ revelations on a long-abandoned practice: