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TikTok is coming under some major fire. I’ve been monitoring the latest accusations about the social media giant this year. So far, Montana has voted to outright ban the social media platform. This will potentially take place in January. The federal government banned it on all government devices. Congress held a 5-hour hearing with the CEO Shou Zi Chew over national security concerns.
But first, a little history on the meteoric rise of TikTok.
TikTok is the fastest-growing social media platform in the world. It passed Facebook and Instagram in user time spent on the platform, and it recently passed YouTube in both user time and revenue. It is expected to pass Meta revenue in 2027.
TikTok shot to the top of the charts in 2018 after Chinese company ByteDance purchased lip-syncing platform Musical.ly and video platform Douyin. Musical.ly had a very large U.S. user base. The two separate services were essentially merged together.
TikTok’s algorithm was one of the first to prioritize view time to keep people on the app. Other social media companies prioritized engagement, such as likes and comments.
There have been many cybersecurity and national security concerns since TikTok rose to the top of the charts. Because TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is a Chinese company, it is expected it would be forced to comply with any Chinese law, no matter where the user was in the world.
A Chinese law in 2017 requires any private company to hand over any customer data to the communist party leadership if requested. There are approximately 150 million TikTok accounts in the United States.
TikTok captures a large amount of data. All social media platforms capture your data at different levels.
In 2020, a software engineer going by the name Bangorlol on Reddit was the first to crack open the TikTok app to find out what data it captures and where the data is sent.
He concluded that “TikTok is a data collection service that is thinly veiled as a social network. If there is an API (a way to send/receive data) on you, your contacts, or your device … well, they are using it.”
He discovered that TikTok is tracking every piece of information related to the hardware of your cellphone. TikTok is tracking what other apps have been installed or even uninstalled from your phone. And it’s capturing everything related to the computer network that the phone is connected to.
Bangorlol discovered through his reverse engineering process that TikTok, compared to other similar apps, appeared to be doing its best to hide the data it was collecting and that the app was even able to execute code remotely. He said comparing the amount of data that TikTok collects vs other social platforms is “like comparing a cup of water to the ocean — they just don’t compare.”
In 2022, TikTok updated its privacy policies to allow the collection of biometric data from Americans such as faceprints and fingerprints. TikTok claims it isn’t collecting that data.
In December 2023, four ByteDance employees were fired after accessing journalists’ data. They were trying to identify a leak about the company.
The CEO of TikTok in congressional testimony this past March indicated the company is working to move all user data to U.S. servers in what is being called Project Texas. Another tech giant, Oracle, would be brought in to review all of the source code and act as a hall monitor of sorts. The comments were met with skepticism when it was projected the task would be completed by the end of this year.
I do not use TikTok. I installed it briefly when I first became aware of it. The content wasn’t for me, and I quickly deleted it. But I couldn’t escape the content. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen TikTok videos repurposed on Instagram, YouTube or the evening news.
After the security reports started being released about the data tracking, I was dismayed that it has taken this many years to get the issue on lawmakers’ radar. Congress has always been way behind the times on emerging technology. And if you want a good laugh, watch some of the questions they ask tech professionals. It’s clearly not their area of expertise.
I would encourage you to think twice about using TikTok. I didn’t even touch on the psychological measures implemented to keep you using the app, which have their own risks. But I think it’s undeniable that willingly giving up so much personal information that a foreign nation can access is a great threat.
John Barker of Stafford County is a technology and cybersecurity consultant at Virtual CIO Agency with over 25 years of experience. He also serves on Stafford County Schools’ Technology Advisory Committee.
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