TikTok has been accused of ‘aggressive’ data harvesting. Is your information at risk?

Cybersecurity experts have warned Australian TikTok users that the Chinese government could use the app to harvest personal information, from in-app messages with friends to precise device locations.© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: picsmart/Alamy
The warnings follow a report by Australian-US cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0, which found the most popular social media app of the year collects “excessive” amounts of information from its users.

Here’s what you need to know about TikTok’s data harvesting, and how to keep your information safe.
What’s different about the way TikTok collects data?
TikTok’s data collection methods include the ability to collect user contact lists, access calendars, scan hard drives including external ones and geolocate devices on an hourly basis.

“When the app is in use, it has significantly more permissions than it really needs,” said Robert Potter, co-CEO of Internet 2.0 and one of the editors of the report.

“It grants those permissions by default. When a user doesn’t give it permission … [TikTok] persistently asks.“If you tell Facebook you don’t want to share something, it won’t ask you again. TikTok is much more aggressive.”

The report labelled the app’s data collection practices “overly intrusive” and questioned their purpose.
“The application can and will run successfully without any of this data being gathered. This leads us to believe that the only reason this information has been gathered is for data harvesting,” it concluded.

Most of the concern in the report focuses on permissions sought on Android devices, because Apple’s iOS significantly limits what information an app can gather. It has a justification system so that if a developer wants access to something it must justify why this is required before it is granted.

“We believe the justification system iOS implements systematically limits a culture of ‘grab what you can’ in data harvesting, “ the report states. Does TikTok have connections with the Chinese government?

TikTok is owned by the Chinese multinational internet company ByteDance, which is headquartered in Beijing. Founder Zhang Yiming sits at

ByteDance has denied a connection to the Chinese government in the past, and called the claim “misinformation” after various leaks suggested it censors material that does not align with Chinese foreign policy aims or mentions the country’s human rights record.

“They are consistent in saying their app doesn’t connect to China, isn’t accessible to Chinese authorities and wouldn’t cooperate with Chinese authorities,” Potter said.

But he said Internet 2.0’s research found “Chinese authorities can actually access device data”. By sending tracked bots to the app, Internet 2.0 “consistently saw … data geolocating back to China”.

Potter has said it wasn’t clear what data was being sent, just that the app was connecting to Chinese servers.© Provided by The Guardian TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which was founded by Zhang Yiming. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters This month TikTok Australia admitted its staff in China were able to access Australian data.

Source : The Guardiant