TikTok is the extremely popular social media program for mobile users that allows the users to create and store short videos. TikTok is owned by the Beijing-based company ByteDance and is expected to have over one billion active monthly users by the end of 2021. The TikTok program has received much negative attention for possible security and privacy issues from former president Trump and even from then-candidate Biden. Although no evidence has been presented recently for these issues, TikTok agreed to pay $92 million in order to settle a class action lawsuit over data privacy claims in the US.
Excessive Data Mining
As all of the social media giants do, TikTok collects various information from its users, such as, age, user name, gender, email address, type of mobile device, message content, and other tracking data regarding a users online activities. It has been suggested that since TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, that all this user data could be shared with the Chinese government which is clearly against the US law, but legal in China. If the TikTok data were to be shared with the Chinese government, that would amount to spying and that has already been suggested in the political circles of US.
As for your privacy, there are Privacy Settings that could lessen the chances of your personal data and your content being spread around the world. First, make your account Private so that only those users that you approve can Follow you. Another important Privacy setting is to disable: “Suggest your account to others”, because by default TikTok will try to share your content with the entire world.
Requiring Unnecessary Permissions
TikTok has a reputation for requiring more liberal permissions from it’s users than is actually necessary for it to function. Recently, TikTok added a new section to its privacy policy stating that: it “may collect biometric identifiers and biometric information”. This amounts to face prints and voice prints, but those terms are not defined nor are there any reasons given for collecting them. For example: permissions must be given to the TikTok program for TikTok to access the microphone, camera, contacts, clipboard, and location service. Some of those are needed, others are questionable. Does TikTok really need the users location service and contacts? This over reach regarding user permissions is one of the reasons for the political pressure mounting in Washington DC, US.
Political Bias Against China
TikTok may have some shady policies, but much of the scrutiny that it receives is basically politically motivated: many politicians just do not trust Chinese-owned companies. For example, two US Senators Josh Hawley and Rick Scott submitted a bill that would ban all federal employees from using TikTok on government devices. President Trumps administration tried to ban TikTok from US due to the risk of ByteDance sharing the TikTok data with the Chinese government. Even President Biden, when he was still a candidate referred to TikTok as “a matter of genuine concern.” Of course, China is known for using mobile apps for surveillance; there is a report in The Guardian of China using mobile phone networks in the Caribbean to surveil US subscribers. There is also the accusation of Chinas Huawei hardware giant selling their smart phone extra cheap in order to dominate the market while collecting data from the users.