Got Tiktok App? Better Delete US latest Country to Ban Due to China Spying

[shockshiok]

https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3...mously-approves-ban-tiktok-government-devices

US Senate panel unanimously approves ban on TikTok on government devices

• The popular short video app has been accused of sharing user data with the Chinese government
• If proposal passes the full Senate, it will be conciliated with a House version and added as an amendment to the annual defence budget bill

Jodi Xu Klein in New York
Published: 4:50am, 23 Jul, 2020

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A US Senate committee overseeing homeland security unanimously approved a proposal on Wednesday to ban the use of TikTok, the Chinese-owned short video app, on government-issued devices.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to support the legislation that was first introduced in March by Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri.
The No TikTok on Government Devices Act would prohibit federal employees, officers, lawmakers and contractors from downloading or using TikTok and all other apps developed by its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance on any device issued by the US government or government corporation.
The legislation will now move to the Senate floor for a vote by the full chamber. If passed, it will be conciliated with a version that has already passed the House of Representatives, 336-71, as an amendment to the US$741 billion National Defence Authorisation Act, the annual defence budget legislation.

If the bill passes both chambers, it is likely to become law; senior Trump administration officials have recently ramped up efforts to highlight the threat the video app may pose.


TikTok has become a user sensation around the world, including among teenagers and young adults in the US. About 60 per cent of its 26.5 million monthly active users in the United States are between the ages of 16 and 24, the company said last year.
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The US has been troubled by a Chinese law introduced in 2017 that said Chinese companies have an obligation to support and cooperate in the country's national intelligence work.

This month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the US was “certainly” exploring a ban, citing alleged concerns that the app had shared user data with the Chinese government in Beijing.

Pompeo says US considering ban on TikTok and other Chinese apps, praises Google, Facebook, Twitter


Pompeo says US considering ban on TikTok and other Chinese apps, praises Google, Facebook, Twitter
People should use TikTok, Pompeo said, “only if you want your private information in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party”.
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Over the weekend, US President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign ran Facebook ads warning about TikTok.

The same law was cited when the administration moved to bar government agencies from buying devices or systems from Chinese firms including Huawei Technologies and ZTE.

Bytedance has repeatedly denied accusations that TikTok harvests data for the Chinese government and says it stores Americans’ data in the US and Singapore, not in China.
In response to the Senate bill’s advance, a TikTok spokesperson said that “millions of American families use TikTok for entertainment and creative expression, which we recognise is not what federal government devices are for”.

The company has “no higher priority than promoting a safe app experience that protects our users' privacy”, the spokesperson said.
During the introduction of his bill Hawley called TikTok “a major security risk” that had “no place on government devices”.
The prohibition “is a necessary step to protect the security of the United States and the data security of all Americans”, Hawley said.
The US Departments of Defence, State, and Homeland Security had already prohibited employees from downloading the TikTok app on their government-issued devices, Hawley said in March.
The departments “even advised them to have their children uninstall it from their personal devices”, Hawley noted.
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[shockshiok]

Apple Catch Tiktok spying, send your photo, data to china military HQ

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdof...y-spying-on-millions-of-iphone-users/#4c03195


Warning—Apple Suddenly Catches TikTok Secretly Spying On Millions Of iPhone Users

Zak DoffmanContributor
Cybersecurity
I write about security and surveillance.

AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
As I reported on June 23, Apple has fixed a serious problem in iOS 14, due in the fall, where apps can secretly access the clipboard on users’ devices. Once the new OS is released, users will be warned whenever an app reads the last thing copied to the clipboard. As I warned earlier this year, this is more than a theoretical risk for users, with countless apps already caught abusing their privacy in this way.
Worryingly, one of the apps caught snooping by security researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk was China’s TikTok. Given other security concerns raised about the app, as well as broader worries given its Chinese origins, this became a headline issue. At the time, TikTok owner Bytedance told me the problem related to the use of an outdated Google advertising SDK that was being replaced.

Well, maybe not. With the release of the new clipboard warning in the beta version of iOS 14, now with developers, TikTok seems to have been caught abusing the clipboard in a quite extraordinary way. So it seems that TikTok didn’t stop this invasive practice back in April as promised after all.
Most Popular In: Cybersecurity

According to TikTok, the issue is now “triggered by a feature designed to identify repetitive, spammy behavior,” and has told me that it has “already submitted an updated version of the app to the App Store removing the anti-spam feature to eliminate any potential confusion.” In other words: We’ve been caught doing something we shouldn’t, we’ve rushed out a fix.
TikTok also told me that the platform “is committed to protecting users' privacy and being transparent about how our app works." No comment on that one. TikTok added that it “looks forward to welcoming outside experts to our Transparency Center later this year.”
When I covered the original TikTok clipboard issue, the company was adamant it was not their problem and related to an outdated library in their app. “The clipboard access issues,” a spokesperson told me, “showed up due to third-party SDKs, in our case an older version Google Ads SDK, so we do not get access to the information through this (presumably they do but we cannot speak to that). We are in the processes of updating so that the third-party SDK will no longer have access.”
TikTok assured me it was being fixed and questioned coverage that suggested this was an issue. “It’s a Google Ads SDK issue,” they assured again in a later email, “so we need to make the change in which version of that SDK we use. TikTok does not get access to the data, but we are updating regardless to resolve it.”
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Now Apple’s welcome iOS 14 security and privacy changes have caught them red-handed still doing something they shouldn’t. Something they said was fixed. TikTok isn’t alone—other apps will now need to change deliberate or inadvertent clipboard access. But TikTok is the highest profile and most totemic of the apps caught out, given its prior coverage and wider issues.
The most acute issue with this vulnerability is Apple’s universal clipboard functionality, which means that anything I copy on my Mac or iPad can be read by my iPhone, and vice versa. So, if TikTok is active on your phone while you work, the app can basically read anything and everything you copy on another device: Passwords, work documents, sensitive emails, financial information. Anything.
Earlier in the year, when TikTok was first exposed, the security researchers acknowledged that there was no way to tell what the app might be doing with user data, and its abuse was lost in the mix of many others. Now it’s feeling different. iOS users can relax, knowing that Apple’s latest safeguard will force TikTok to make the change, which in itself shows how critical a fix this has been. For Android users, though, there is no word yet as to whether this is an issue for them as well.

 

[Peiweh]

Who is surprised? Huawei all the PRC tech is spying on you! TIKTOK is a CCP spy program.

 

[laksaboy]

Tik Tok is for boring, narcissistic people anyway.

 

[kiketerm]

See teenagers using this mostly. I am starting to feel unease at the mainland agenda