[HN Gopher] TikTok Can Circumvent Apple & Google Privacy Protect...
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TikTok Can Circumvent Apple & Google Privacy Protections, Access
Full User Data
Author : hammock
Score : 25 points
Date : 2022-02-22 21:27 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.yahoo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.yahoo.com)
| olliej wrote:
| Wow, that headline is clickbait nonsense, and the article make
| numerous .
|
| They do not have access to "all user data", that is blatantly
| false, even in the article's own claims.
|
| > "Once one advertiser has a device ID that's correlated, all
| privacy is gone,"
|
| What? That's only a single Ad network, and no one has the scope
| of surveillance google has (and uses) except maybe Facebook.
|
| Likewise, they do not have access to keychain data - they use
| keychain sync to link a user across multiple devices (the whole
| point of keychain sync is to sync data across multiple devices) -
| keychain does not provide arbitrary access to any app, and even
| if they had raw access to the local keychain db file[s] it's
| encrypted. It's probably worth adding an easy way to remove an
| app's keychain data (this would be an entirely UI feature).
|
| The various device ID methods used are likewise the standard
| scummy ad industry practices that all the "freemium" apps use,
| and many of the ones you pay for as well.
|
| It changes the way it behaves using javascript etc. Presumably
| it's just another WebView app, so that kind of goes without
| saying, and is again not unique to TikTok.
|
| "On the Apple app, the studies indicated TikTok made its own
| version of a video player presumably to ensure the code runs
| properly -- but Lockerman said it's also likely used to hide
| things"
|
| Wow. Just wow.
|
| Anyway, this seems like yet another china-bogeyman article making
| absurdly broad claims about the breadth of data collected while
| describing the much more limited techniques they're actually
| using. Essentially it's is trying very hard to act like what
| TikTok is doing is somehow worse or more nefarious than other
| companies (e.g. google and Facebook).
|
| While there may be actual legitimate concerns about TikTok,
| articles like this undermine the credibility of actual
| researchers.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| Bad headline, and no link to the original research. Needs better
| link.
| Clent wrote:
| The cover story is they collect no more than Facebook (others)
| but they have a sweetheart deal with Apple and Google to
| circumvent the app sandbox under dubious conditions.
|
| Facebook is jealous of the revenue potential. Epic is pseudo-
| concerned for the oppressed developer community.
| olliej wrote:
| I don't see any claim of any apple deal?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I don't see anything in the article that jibes with the headline,
| appears they are fingerprinting a unique device ID. The assertion
| that this "gives TikTok's Beijing-based parent company ByteDance
| full access to user data" is uncorroborated. It's unclear to me
| why these studies were shared "exclusively" with this
| entertainment news outlet.
|
| > "Consequentially, just because the application doesn't do
| anything bad today, doesn't mean that it won't do bad things in
| the future," one study said.
|
| Nothing new.
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(page generated 2022-02-22 23:01 UTC)