House Intelligence Committee Wants To Know if Temu Is a Threat to Consumers

Americans are allegedly being exploited by bargain retailer Temu, according to some lawmakers. The FBI and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have been called upon to answer the House Intelligence Committee’s concerns about Temu’s use of U.S. consumer data.

According to FOX Business, the committee wrote a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and SEC Chairman Gary Gensler requesting information regarding various alleged activities of Temu and its parent company, Pinduoduo (PDD Holdings). Specifically, the Intelligence Committee wants to know if Americans’ data is being misused.

“The relationship between Temu, their parent company Pinduoduo, and the Chinese Communist Party’s national security laws raise serious concerns that the CCP has taken another effort, beyond TikTok, to exploit Americans’ data and undermine our democracy,” Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill, told FOX. 

It’s not just the House Intelligence Committee that is questioning Temu’s allegedly nefarious practices. Ever since the app exploded in popularity, various lawmakers, states’ attorneys general, and other Congress committees have raised issue with the company.

Is Temu a Threat to American Consumers?

Many Americans had never heard of Temu until the company spent $15 million on Super Bowl ads this year. The company attracts customers by offering extremely low prices on a multitude of items, including clothes, electronics, and home décor. However, it has been alleged that the Temu app also gains access to a large amount of user data, which could put privacy at risk.

According to a lawsuit filed by Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin in June, the app can extract information from a user’s phone, including a person’s location, documents, and text messages. Armed with information obtained through an investigation by Grizzly Research, the AG accused Temu of spying on unsuspecting users.

“Temu is designed to make this expansive access undetected, even by sophisticated users,” Griffin’s complaint said, per Ars Technica. “Once installed, Temu can recompile itself and change properties, including overriding the data privacy settings users believe they have in place.”

To make matters potentially worse, PDD is required by Chinese law to hand over any collected data to China’s government, which supersedes any data protection laws in the U.S. While these alleged practices of Temu and PDD are not entirely proven, millions of American still use the app regardless of the privacy protection concerns of lawmakers and other entities.