DIGITAL LIFE

The TikTok application collects, without authorization, a variety of personal data

Information about the fact that the popular TikTok app behaves doubtfully about how iOS devices are running has not yet cooled down, as new details of life behind the scenes of this service have been discovered. Enthusiasts who reverse-engineered this entertainment app concluded that it was more of a “personal data collection service disguised as a social network”.

As a result of the study, it was found that the TikTok application collects, stores and processes information about:
-smartphone hardware (processor type, hardware identifiers, screen size and resolution, memory usage, disk space, etc.);
-other applications that the user has installed (even those that have been removed);
-everything connected to the network (ip, local ip, mac addresses of the router and smartphone, name of the Wi-Fi access point);
-root / jailbreak;
-GPS data (approximately once every 30 seconds).

The application also configures the local proxy server on the mobile device to “transcode media”, which can be easily abused, as it does not have authentication. Even more disturbing, according to the analysis, was that the collection of information on the device is controlled remotely, which makes reverse engineering difficult.
By the way, a similar analysis of other popular mobile apps like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter showed that they collect incomparably less user data. So, maybe there are rumors that TikTok is a potential spying platform for the Chinese government, and are there no rumors?

AVnews