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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

#111

Post by jquery »

godelski wrote: post #89
jquery wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CCP has already shown they’re willing to abuse TikTok to stir unrest in the USA, you aren’t even making a theoretical argument. I’m a lot more worried about China than Russia, when it comes to bad behavior by state actors.

This is why I'm always confused my privacy arguments. When someone says that they want privacy the responses go like: reference Goebbels: "I have nothing to hide, so I'm not worried" Downplay: "They only read my emails and everything I write to sell me stuff better. Sometimes I need stuff. They're helping me!" As if it can only be used to sell and nothing else. World revolves around self: "Well ads don't affect me."…

Excellent comment, you changed my thinking on the issue. I feel like liberal, educated democracies are focused on the wrong problems. It’s only going to get harder to change course the longer we keep sailing in this direction of a laissez faire, anything-goes approach to software.

Apple’s infamous walled garden solves this problem to some extent, but introduces others because it lacks due process, leading to corruption where money can solve any problem, and so apps like Tiktok get to abuse their trust with impunity.

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

#112

Post by [deleted] »

natch wrote: post #25
nickthegreek wrote: post #3

I'm happy that ios14 is adding more transparency on whats apps are accessing like this clipboard situation. I'd love to see more of these, like camera roll and mic access.

iOS 14 has a new workflow that lets the user give an app access to a photo or selected photos without the app getting access to any of their other photos. Big privacy improvement on that front at least. I don't know about mic access.

[deleted]

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

#113

Post by techntoke »

TikTok also is violating COPPA. Any underage child that signs up with a Google Account, you can clearly see from the Google account settings that they are collecting email addresses and other personal information. I believe Google and other app store providers should just remove them.

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

#114

Post by aetch »

ebg13 wrote: post #43
wycy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google maps detects copied addresses and lets you route to them in one click.

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

#115

Post by godelski »

jquery wrote: post #111
godelski wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I'm always confused my privacy arguments. When someone says that they want privacy the responses go like: reference Goebbels: "I have nothing to hide, so I'm not worried" Downplay: "They only read my emails and everything I write to sell me stuff better. Sometimes I need stuff. They're helping me!" As if it can only be used to sell and nothing else. World revolves around self: "Well ads don't affect me."…

Excellent comment, you changed my thinking on the issue. I feel like liberal, educated democracies are focused on the wrong problems. It’s only going to get harder to change course the longer we keep sailing in this direction of a laissez faire, anything-goes approach to software. Apple’s infamous walled garden solves this problem to some extent, but introduces others because it lacks due process, leading to corrupti…

As I see it, democracy is unstable. I like living in a democratic system (yes, a democratically elected republic is still a democratic system). But we have to recognize that it is unstable and democracies work under the pretense that the keys to power are distributed and frequently moving hands (by elective processes). So the danger to democracy is the collection of keys, or the consolidation of power. Power consolidation DOES have benefits after all. I mean a benevolent dictator is probably the best form of government, the issue is that if the next dictator isn't benevolent (or how long until that). The same is with democracy. We keep power distributed so that when a malevolent (or even just non-benevolent) ruler comes into power they aren't able to do much. Essentially as long as we don't let corruption fill the majority of roles with power, we're fine. They have to spend a lot of time and resources consolidating that power.

Essentially this is what "turnkey tyranny" is: the point at which power is consolidated to such a degree that a malevolent ruler would have the power of a tyrant.

So it has never been about having something to hide or that people aren't using a power malevolently. It is the potential for abuse and that given enough time a power is likely to be abused. Distribution makes it more difficult (but does not eliminate) to abuse power.

With HN's love for federated systems, which essentially operate under similar principles, I'm surprised this is not a more popular concept. The only difference is that we're talking about government officials instead of Moxie.

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

#116

Post by ebg13 »

aetch wrote: post #114
ebg13 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google Maps has a clear use case for accessing the clipboard. I don't think it does. Neither application should "access" the clipboard.

Google maps detects copied addresses and lets you route to them in one click.

> Google maps detects copied addresses and lets you route to them in one click.

Routing to copied addresses is not a clear use case for letting something spy on everything the user copies, because we already have an invocation for handing clipboard contents to software exactly when the user desires it. It's called the "paste" command.

At some point engineers need to stop doing things just because they can.

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

#117

Post by parliament32 »

zkid18 wrote: post #73
stronglikedan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bit I wonder why everyone talking about one specific app? In this particular case, I think it's because the person who apparently discovered it claims that other apps "don't collect anywhere near the same amount of data that TikTok does". [0] > For what it's worth I've reversed the Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter apps. They don't collect anywhere near the same amount of data that TikTok does, and they sure…

I went trough this post earlier. Unfortunately the video has been removed for some reason. > I'm getting a lot of DM's asking me to prove the majority of this with a paper and snippets of the offending code. I have a decent amount of my notes on my other laptop that recently had a motherboard failure and the majority of that data is on the laptop's SSD. It's a macbook pro, so recovering the data isn't exactly super s…

I don't use or like tiktok, but that post also came across as super fishy to me. Lots of it boiled down to "I'm a software engineer, trust me" with a good amount of FUD thrown in (going on about GPS data when the app doesn't even request the Location permission? complaining the app can see your screen resolution?). I'm sure the truth is somewhere in between but tiktok is the beating-horse of the day so you'll see all sorts of cool stuff like mainstream media using an anonymous reddit post as a source.

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

#119

Post by parliament32 »

gruez wrote: post #42
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?

On Android, you can happily select some text then hit Share (same menu as Copy and Cut).
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