Warning--Apple Suddenly Catches TikTok Secretly Spying On Millions Of iPhone Users

[Lithos]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/06/26/warning-apple-suddenly-catches-tiktok-secretly-spying-on-millions-of-iphone-users/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Worryingly, one of the apps caught snooping by security researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk was China’s TikTok. Given other security concerns raised about the app, as well as broader worries given its Chinese origins, this became a headline issue. At the time, TikTok owner Bytedance told me the problem related to the use of an outdated Google advertising SDK that was being replaced.

Wondering which other players are also doing this.

[JonLP24]

1. I don't trust that app at all

I will never use it.

[abqtommy]

2. I don't use an iPhone, Android or any "smart" phone. I use a 3G flip phone. It does what I want

it to...

[USALiberal]

3. Well, you are in the minority. nt

[GoCubsGo]

5. I have a 3G phone, too.

Mine's even more basic than that. It doesn't even have a headphone jack, let alone a camera. It looks like a larger version of the phone Ben Stiller's character used in "Zoolander." It makes phone calls. That's all I need it to do.

[PTWB]

6. I do at half of all my web browsing on my iPhone.

[GoCubsGo]

7. I use a computer and a tablet for that.

I'm not a big fan of looking at things in miniature.

[PTWB]

9. Nor I.

It wasn’t until I upgraded to an iPhone with an oversized screen that I began heavily using it for browsing.

[GoCubsGo]

10. That's still too small for my liking nt

[PTWB]

12. These "Max" screens are plenty but for me for most activities.

I still do all my work browsing on the desktop but things like DU or reddit or amazon that have a readable mobile format are just so easy to use. I can sit out on the front porch with my coffee and engage in discussions or do my grocery shopping.

[GoCubsGo]

13. Whatever floats your boat.

I honestly don't care.

[PTWB]

15. Indeed.

[Maru Kitteh]

17. Seems like you opened the convo by telling all of us about you, but you don't care

(so you tell us) about someone who has a different experience/preference to you.


Sounds about right.

[GoCubsGo]

19. Nope. Just replyiing to another person.

I didn't "open" anything.

[Maru Kitteh]

20. Whatever gets you by.

[GoCubsGo]

21. And, you, as well.

[Kitchari]

4. The spying consists of capturing what's copied to the clipboard

Which could be anything, including password information. The article states that so far it's Apple devices, but indeed they have not investigated whether it affects Androids. I'll bet it does

[FreeState]

18. It could be not copied as well

The new OS coming out this fall asks if your clipboard should be available to the app. Many times these asks are part of an api that are not used. For example the app could be asking for it and not using it all.

[edhopper]

8. I thought it was pretty well known

that tik tok is spyware?

[Takket]

11. i can't say this enough... DO NOT USE TIKTOK.........

it is basically a data gathering tool for the chinese government to gather info on things such as your likes and dislikes. remember cambridge analytica? they used your facebook data points to determine who they could target with pro-drumpf ads to help influence swing voters. that is what tiktok is doing.

the military banned it because they were worried about China accessing their data.........

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/12/30/army-follows-pentagon-guidance-bans-chinese-owned-tiktok-app.html

[Hermit-The-Prog]

14. Facebook is a data gathering (and tracking) tool for corporations.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/17/the-cambridge-analytica-scandal-changed-the-world-but-it-didnt-change-facebook

18 Mar 2019
The Cambridge Analytica scandal changed the world – but it didn't change Facebook

A year after devastating revelations of data misuse, Mark Zuckerberg still hasn’t fulfilled his promises to reform


It can be hard to remember from down here, beneath the avalanche of words and promises and apologies and blogposts and manifestos that Facebook has unleashed upon us over the course of the past year, but when the Cambridge Analytica story broke one year ago, Mark Zuckerberg’s initial response was a long and deafening silence.

It took five full days for the founder and CEO of Facebook – the man with total control over the world’s largest communications platform – to emerge from his Menlo Park cloisters and address the public. When he finally did, he did so with gusto, taking a new set of talking points (“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you”) on a seemingly unending roadshow, from his own Facebook page to the mainstream press to Congress and on to an oddly earnest discussion series he’s planning to subject us to at irregular intervals for the rest of 2019.

The culmination of all that verbosity came earlier this month, when Zuck unloaded a 3,000-word treatise on Facebook’s “privacy-focused” future (a phrase that somehow demands both regular quotation marks and ironic scare quotes), a missive that was perhaps best described by the Guardian’s Emily Bell as “the nightmarish college application essay of an accomplished sociopath”.

[ismnotwasm]

16. There's a Reddit post

Where the user reversed engineered the app and basically said is worse than any other social media. I’ll see if I can find it

Guess it’s originally from boredpanda

https://www.boredpanda.com/tik-tok-reverse-engineered-data-information-collecting/