Why nervous people in power want to stop you from using TikTok, according to a longtime cybersecurity researcher

The federal government, along with many state and foreign governments and some companies, has banned TikTok on work-provided phones. This type of ban can be effective for protecting data related to government work.


But a full ban of the app is another matter, which raises a number of questions: What data privacy risk does TikTok pose? What could the Chinese government do with data collected by the app? Is its content recommendation algorithm dangerous? And is it even possible to ban an app?


Vacuuming up data


As a cybersecurity researcher, I’ve noted that every few years a new mobile app that becomes popular raises issues of security, privacy and data access.


Apps collect data for several reasons. Sometimes the data is used to improve the app for users. However, most apps collect data that the companies use in part to fund their operations. This revenue typically comes from targeting users with ads based on the data they collect. The questions this use of data raises are: Does the app need all this data? What does it do with the data? And how does it protect the data from others?


So what makes TikTok different from the likes of Pokemon-GO, Facebook or even your phone itself? TikTok’s privacy policy, which
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