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TikTok app to stop accessing user clipboards after being caught in the act

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Re: TikTok app to stop accessing user clipboards after being caught in the act

#41

Post by benologist »

thewindow wrote: post #29
zkid18 wrote: post #24

Great to see another layer of transparency in ios14. Bit I wonder why everyone talking about one specific app? I see a huge bias towards TikTok in headlines "iOS 14 caught TikTok and other apps spying on the clipboard" [0] "iOS 14 beta shows apps like TikTok still spy on your iPhone" [1] There a bunch of apps like VICE, Google News, WSJ that has been caught doing exactly the same. [2] I may find the explanation why T…

Just because other apps do that is no excuse for bad behaviour. Almost all apps get flack for bad behaviour. Tiktok is the newest popular thing on the block and it is expected to be widely covered. Honestly it is okay to discuss the bar behaviours of an app without blaming other apps.

Being "caught" reading the clipboard is not an indictment that you are doing something wrong. It's very good that it is no longer occurring invisibly in the background, but so far what we have seen appears to be frivolous usage rather than malicious.

Re: TikTok app to stop accessing user clipboards after being caught in the act

#42

Post by gruez »

toohotatopic wrote: post #34

Why do phones need the clipboard at all? There is a 'share with' infrastructure. Why not explicitly send copied data to the desired app directly instead of storing it in a central place?

That works for sharing an article or a post, but how do you quote a portion of a post?

Re: TikTok app to stop accessing user clipboards after being caught in the act

#43

Post by ebg13 »

wycy wrote: post #13
Calvin02 wrote: post #9

This is so ridiculous. Google Maps accesses the clipboard. Try it out: copy an address and open maps. So do Facebook and Instagram, I’m sure. The level of paranoia in the Valley is astounding.

Google Maps has a clear use case for accessing the clipboard. If Tok Tok only accessed the clipboard on launch to check for a Tik Tok URL, that might be one thing, but there's no clear reason Tik Tok would need access to the clipboard literally every 3 keystrokes.

> Google Maps has a clear use case for accessing the clipboard.

I don't think it does. Neither application should "access" the clipboard.

Re: TikTok app to stop accessing user clipboards after being caught in the act

#44

Post by swalsh »

chvid wrote: post #26

Hotels.com and a host of others did the same thing, indicating that this is not particular nefarious. However we keep talking about TikTok. Why is that?

Because Tik Tok takes data collection to a whole new level. It uses this, and every other trick in the book. And that matters because it's not clear that this data will be constrained to the activities of sending me extremely targeted advertising. Now we can have a reasonable debate about that, but this has a new level of concern.

As a Chinese app, how do I know the Chinese government will not use me as an unknowing participant in a future cyberwar? One thing Tik Tok does is collect a pretty exhaustive list apps installed on my phone. That could be used for identifying vulnerabilities they could potentially exploit.

Re: TikTok app to stop accessing user clipboards after being caught in the act

#46

Post by numair »

Most of the anti-TikTok comments that have emerged recently are beyond hysterical. We are arguing about China using this app as a primary nexus of intelligence gathering, in a world where they already have the US government’s entire OPM database?[1]

A lot of apps are doing the stupid clipboard detection thing. As others have commented, there’s reasons for this that range from spam detection to link shortening. It’s lousy, I agree, but this has been a very common thing in a pre-iOS 14 world.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Manageme...

Re: TikTok app to stop accessing user clipboards after being caught in the act

#47

Post by abledon »

numair wrote: post #46

Most of the anti-TikTok comments that have emerged recently are beyond hysterical. We are arguing about China using this app as a primary nexus of intelligence gathering, in a world where they already have the US government’s entire OPM database?[1] A lot of apps are doing the stupid clipboard detection thing. As others have commented, there’s reasons for this that range from spam detection to link shortening. It’s l…

whats an OPM database? this?? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3245162/

Re: TikTok app to stop accessing user clipboards after being caught in the act

#49

Post by erk__ »

zkid18 wrote: post #24

Great to see another layer of transparency in ios14. Bit I wonder why everyone talking about one specific app? I see a huge bias towards TikTok in headlines "iOS 14 caught TikTok and other apps spying on the clipboard" [0] "iOS 14 beta shows apps like TikTok still spy on your iPhone" [1] There a bunch of apps like VICE, Google News, WSJ that has been caught doing exactly the same. [2] I may find the explanation why T…

The app for Discord would also make the warning show, though the fix for that was a small one line change.

https://twitter.com/lolpython/status/1276235830692941829

Re: TikTok app to stop accessing user clipboards after being caught in the act

#50

Post by numair »

abledon wrote: post #47
numair wrote: post #46

Most of the anti-TikTok comments that have emerged recently are beyond hysterical. We are arguing about China using this app as a primary nexus of intelligence gathering, in a world where they already have the US government’s entire OPM database?[1] A lot of apps are doing the stupid clipboard detection thing. As others have commented, there’s reasons for this that range from spam detection to link shortening. It’s l…

whats an OPM database? this?? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3245162/

Thought the OPM hack was common knowledge, guess not. I added a link!
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