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Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

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Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#381

Post by vxNsr »

kenhwang wrote: post #374
wiml wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think Amazon doesn't have a clear legal basis to decide which devices are allowed to connect to their internal network services? Or, for that matter, to decide which devices ca be taken into non-public, secured parts of Amazon buildings?

They probably got informed that since phones are personal devices and not company provided, this level of restriction might land them in the parts of BYOD laws that require employers to compensate for personal device use for work. Amazon probably decided most employees don't have anything too sensitive and it's not worth buying everyone a phone.

Our company gets around that by banning BYOD.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#382

Post by che_shirecat »

_abox wrote: post #346
melling wrote: post #342

The email sent to Amazon employees was a mistake. https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/amazon-bans-tiktok-emp...

Someone goes through all the trouble of typing that explicit email and it's a mistake? Sounds more like 'pulled after huge feedback'. Though personally I'd agree with this decision. TikTok seems to be a particularly bad apple: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news...

I keep seeing that Reddit thread linked (even the NYT is citing it now?) but still cannot for the life of me figure out what substantially TikTok does that is a concern compared to other popular apps? The guy has like 10 paragraphs of stories but no actual evidence? What is TikTok doing that somehow is flying under the app store guidelines of both Google and Apple but still a "national security concern"? Why is the only actual "evidence" that can seemingly be found, a comment from some rando on Reddit, not peer-reviewed, reproducible work from legit cybersecurity researchers? This reeks of the same scent that Bloomberg's "omg they're hackz0ring our chips!" story gave off.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#383

Post by shripadk »

J5892 wrote: post #326
shripadk wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you will allow an app whose company is tied to a "totalitarian state built on the backbone of censorship and information control" to steal your data? You cannot have a company in China without agreeing to the terms and conditions of the CCP. The CCP is the totalitarian state you are so against. They are actively collecting your data. In realtime. And you don't want that app to be banned because you have a moral id…

No, I would never use TikTok. Why are you so eager to have the US copy the ideals of the CCP?

> Why are you so eager to have the US copy the ideals of the CCP?

There are no "ideals" in supporting something that is obviously stealing your data and handing it over to a totalitarian regime. Should you not be asking why this app exists in the store in the first place when the store and the app is being used within the jurisdiction of the United States but data being sent to a foreign entity? Would you be okay with US citizens personal information being handed over and stored in the servers controlled by a totalitarian Government?

As far as being "eager" to have the US copy the ideals of the CCP are concerned let me tell you where you are wrong: If the US was to indeed copy the ideals of CCP, it would be forcing TikTok and other social media to hand over personal information of you and fellow US Citizens without a subpoena or a court order. Now that is copying the ideals of CCP.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#384

Post by frequentnapper »

taurath wrote: post #281
dvt wrote: post #109

Looks like TikTok is slowly imploding. I know there's plenty of political implications and a lot of discussion here is on that (which is interesting in its own right), but I wonder if there's opportunity here for a potential competitor.

Tiktok isn't imploding, its broadly a bunch of old men (senators, CEOs) afraid of china. The userbase of tiktok is tweens and teens. The best thing those old men could do is legislate system level privacy protections onto IOS and Android so an app can never get the level of info they're worried about.

I am a brown guy in my 30s and I also would like to have tiktok be banned from my home country.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#385

Post by mattcrox »

kerng wrote: post #380
variaga wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMZN employee here - In my case, it's (3)

Assuming you get somehow reimbursed, like some companies that dont have corp issued phones?

Yes we have cell reimbursement

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#386

Post by frequentnapper »

ubermon wrote: post #238
c3534l wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding was that TikTok was basically the Chinese response to periscope and vine, which was popular, but couldn't make money. TikTok's scheme is to be spyware that even puts Facebook to shame, in a way that I'm not convinced isn't just government spyware disguised as social media where the point isn't to make a profit to begin with. If similar attempts have failed because of monetization struggles, I don't s…

They are/were planning to IPO, and their financial will be published so I doubt the conspiracy theory. I've used the original TikTok(Dou Yin), it is super addictive, even my parents fall into that. They do a very good job in terms of engaging both the viewer and content producer(profit cutting etc.) In my opinion, are still "evil" in terms of hijacking our brain, but I am a bit fed up with those prevailing political…

Yeah but this is in response to people being fed up with what China has been doing. I really hope more countries catch on and put China in its place.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#387

Post by Mekantis »

a13n wrote: post #172

I feel like this TikTok backlash is so overblown. I don't think TikTok is spying on US consumers/business, and I don't think TikTok is sharing any US private data with CCP... I believe this because there's no evidence to the contrary, and out of principle you shouldn't assume malintent. In fact, TikTok explicitly left Hong Kong because if they didn't they would have to share private data with CCP to comply with new l…

I have no idea how anybody can look at TikTok with a straight face and not see that they're a threat. Maybe if you've conveniently closed your eyes to the CCP's behavior in the past, say, 10-20 years regarding corporate espionage and suppressing freedom of speech and compiling profiles of everybody who dares speak out about them, as well as their behavior now in recent events (particularly how they're more than eager to punish local dissidents). Then, I guess, sure, there's absolutely nothing here to see. As with every Chinese company, the problem isn't that they're Chinese. It's that as a Chinese company, they exist only with the blessing of the CCP.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#388

Post by prteja11 »

jeffbee wrote: post #182
ghaff wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of me thinks that MDM on employee phones has become a something of a checkbox item because customers ask for it but it's not clear to what extent it really protects sensitive customer data (which is what they're concerned about).

It is literally a checkbox item for PCI DSS.

Can you share the requirement from PCI DSS? [it's not]

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#389

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

che_shirecat wrote: post #382
_abox wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone goes through all the trouble of typing that explicit email and it's a mistake? Sounds more like 'pulled after huge feedback'. Though personally I'd agree with this decision. TikTok seems to be a particularly bad apple: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news...

I keep seeing that Reddit thread linked (even the NYT is citing it now?) but still cannot for the life of me figure out what substantially TikTok does that is a concern compared to other popular apps? The guy has like 10 paragraphs of stories but no actual evidence? What is TikTok doing that somehow is flying under the app store guidelines of both Google and Apple but still a "national security concern"? Why is the o…

For one, the clipboard snooping problem.

If you’re using a password-manager (like we’re supposed to!) and use it to copy passwords (say, your Amazon employee internal credentials...) while you have TikTok open, the TikTok app would see it and could upload it somewhere.

...and we only know about this issue now because iOS 14 adds clipboard snooping notifications - and that was only a month ago! Think about the stuff that the app could be doing that we don’t yet know about.

There’s too many bloody-obvious security vulnerabilities that are decades old but don’t get fixed until they either become a meme (like SQL Injection) or the platform vendor does something about it (iOS 14 clipboard notifications) - and don’t forget that the SIGINT community is sitting on millions of dollars worth of zero-days that they won’t disclose to vendors unless they feel like it - so I fully expect there to be more surprises in TikTok - and other apps - in the years to come - probably indefinitely.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#390

Post by bonzini »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #349
bonzini wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in theory they should have no control on the apps you install on the personal side. Is this just moral obligation, or are they requiring full control of the phone even outside the work profile?

I manage phones for a big corp. Just want to clarify what's possible. Google highly limits what you can do in Work Profile mode, you can't control much outside the work profile. We can't see the app list on the personal side in work profile mode, BUT we can specify some that are a no-go. I'll show up as a compliance violation. But we can't view the list anymore like we could do with the pre-work profile Android Devic…

> we can specify some that are a no-go.

Oh, that's very interesting! I knew about the PIN requirement as an example of control outside the work profile, but I didn't know this was possible. It makes sense though.

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