

Lin said his research did not find that the app connects to any servers in China directly, but couldn't rule out data being sent from one country to another and then onward to China. and Singapore - must comply with the laws of individual countries. 'Deeply concerning'ĭouyin only needs to abide by Chinese law while TikTok - which stores its data in the U.S.
#Tik tok trends right now android
But it used to - according to a 2020 report in the Wall Street Journal that found TikTok "skirted a privacy safeguard" in Google's Android operating system to gather MAC addresses from millions of devices for more than a year. TikTok told the Wall Street Journal, at the time, that newer versions of the app do not collect MAC addresses such devices. TikTok did not collect them, according to Lin's report. what other elements of scrutiny would we like to subject them to?" he said.ĭuration 2:58 The head of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security is warning users of the popular social media platform TikTok to be cautious with their data and what they share with the app.Įxcept that Douyin also acquired a device's Media Access Control (MAC) address a unique, 12-digit identifier. Even if you completely reset a phone and wipe all of the personal information, the MAC address does not change and that information could still be used to identify a user, Lin said in an interview from Taipei.īoth Google and Apple prohibit third-party apps from collecting MAC addresses. (Douyin is not available in either company's app store.) "It gives us a lot of pause to thinking exactly. His company examined social media apps including Meta-owned Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp and found TikTok was "an outlier in the sheer amount of data it collects," he said.įor example, Potter says TikTok can collect "precise" GPS location data from users - much more precise than the company once admitted. Social media business rely on such analytics to sell advertising, develop new versions of programs, and tailor content to users' habits.īut Robert Potter, the co-founder and co-CEO of the Canberra-based cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0, says TikTok isn't completely transparent with its more than 1.5 billion users.

Ninety-nine per cent of people are not going to read the dozens of pages of terms of service," said Heidi Tworek, the Canada Research Chair and Director, of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions at the University of British Columbia.ĭuration 1:51 Social media apps like TikTok can use your device as a conduit to other people's personal information, says Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former senior intelligence officer with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. It's also able to identify "the objects and scenery that appear, the existence and location within an image of face and body features … and the text of the words spoken." Like other platforms, including Facebook and YouTube, TikTok also monitors the content you engage with and for how long.īut TikTok also monitors how you use your device and how it functions, including "keystroke patterns or rhythms, battery state, audio settings and connected audio devices," according to those terms. Its voluminous terms of service lay out what you're agreeing to access to personal data like contacts, calendars, information about which device you're using, which operating system and your location. Once the app is downloaded and opened on your smartphone or tablet, it's getting to know a lot about you. "CBC is a Crown corporation and not subject to the Policy on Service and Digital, and as such is not covered by this decision," the statement said.ĭuration 2:30 The federal government is removing and blocking the video-sharing platform TikTok from all federal government devices, citing security reasons. The move came just days after the federal privacy watchdog said it, along with three provinces, will investigate whether TikTok and its China-based parent company ByteDance are complying with Canadian privacy laws.Īgencies and Crown corporations that don't fall under the federal government's Policy on Service and Digital were informed of the decision on Monday and "strongly advised" to consider following suit, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat said in an emailed statement on Friday.

Other Canadian jurisdictions and institutions are considering similar bans. and the European Union in prohibiting the social media app on government-issued devices. One of the hottest TikTok trends right now seemingly is Western governments banning the immensely popular app from their employees' phones and launching probes into its data collection practices.
