That doesn't make it harmless.
If that metadata reveals the user is in a US military base, what's to stop the servers from requesting additional data from the app, or turning on the microphone or camera?
>Disclaimer
>TikTok offers plethora of features to their users thanks to its million of lines long code. As such, a single article can not cover a question as broad and vague as “does TikTok poses a threat to US national security?”. That’s why I’ll cover the matter over several articles all focused on specific subjects.
That wasn't in the TLDR that most people will skip to. You need to update it to reflect reality. It's misleading. Might as well be CCP propaganda.
>In this article, I tried to understand what data does TikTok regularly send back to its servers. I decrypted the content of the requests and analysed it. As far as we can see, in its current state, TikTok doesn’t have a suspicious behavior and is not exfiltrating unusual data. Getting data about the user device is quite common in the mobile world and we would obtain similar results with Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and others.
Modern social media apps are security threats, and if one of them has enough market penetration ("Daddy daddy install TikTok and see my music video!" - Daddy is a general in the US military or a bioweapons researcher), AND is accessible to state actors, the chances of an installation slipping through that is used maliciously approaches 1.
There is a long list of programs that are huge security threats and blatantly violate our rights, not just TikTok. Software has long been eroding our rights in the West, and the fact that everyone does it doesn't make it OK.
>Every subject has a right to be secure from all unreasonable searches, and seizures of his person, his houses, his papers, and all his possessions.
> That wasn't in the TLDR that most people will skip to. You need to update it to reflect reality.
I'm not the author, but I would encourage you to comment on the article and express your thoughts to the author there.
> There is a long list of programs that are huge security threats and blatantly violate our rights, not just TikTok. Software has long been eroding our rights in the West, and the fact that everyone does it doesn't make it OK.
100% agree. I've seen how that sausage is made, and it's horrifying. I worry sometimes that I sound like a crazed conspiracy theorist when I describe all the things going on under the hood of the internet, the incredible amount of information entities are scraping from your online behavior, the sheer *volume* of information, etc.
Android was maybe the smartest thing Google ever did. Every phone is a tracking device optimized for big data collection. I know of an app that allows a completely unrelated company to monitor their display stands in grocery stores based off of interactions with Bluetooth devices their users encounter. I only know about this because I know who set it up, and watched him pitch it to the C-suite.
And then there's [this.](https://blog.beaconstac.com/2016/02/25-retailers-nailing-it-with-their-proximity-marketing-campaigns/)
I remember a 3rd party pitching proximity based marketing to us when I worked at a Fortune 500. The ad revenue based internet has gone from bad to Orwellian. Decentralized cryptocurrency could have fixed most of this, but it was captured and rate-limited before it could reach more than the early adopters. Now it's been transformed from peer-to-peer electronic currency that could have powered internet commerce to some kind of speculative digital tulip.
I still think cryptocurrency specifically used as money (without blocksize limits and obstructionist incumbents) is the answer to most of our problems. It's going to take major disruption for the incumbents to get out of the way, though. 10-50 years is my guess, and only if we don't end up with a global authoritarian government first.
5 comments
2 u/some_crypto_guy 04 Aug 2020 03:39
1 u/TTTA [OP] 04 Aug 2020 07:22
1 u/some_crypto_guy 04 Aug 2020 14:22
1 u/TTTA [OP] 04 Aug 2020 17:57
2 u/some_crypto_guy 04 Aug 2020 18:18