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Perhaps there's something nefarious here, or perhaps it's just looking for a Chromecast or Apple TV?
Also: TikTok doesn’t support AirPlay or Chromecast.
[1] Per the user’s instructions on a good day at least.
Perhaps there's something nefarious here, or perhaps it's just looking for a Chromecast or Apple TV?
Perhaps there's something nefarious here, or perhaps it's just looking for a Chromecast or Apple TV?
The first possibility that comes to my mind would be sniffing Ethernet MAC addresses because it could be done without any sort of device-specific support built in to the app. Assuming your local devices’ manufacturers are following Da Rulez, the first part of their MAC address usually tells you the company, and the second part tends to be individualized/serialized.
That would, for example, let TikTok derive when certain users are together IRL if they both show up scan-adjacent to a unique MAC. Or maybe it could let them derive multiple accounts belonging to a single person if one is used on VPN-only to discuss political or personal topics that person might not want associated with their IRL identity.
They use the local network as one of their sensors to identify you (fingerprinting). However they have plenty more (see their privacy policy).
Regardless, Apple has done the right thing by putting this behind a permissions box, but the developer should be required to have some sort of explanation string of why they need this.
Perhaps there's something nefarious here, or perhaps it's just looking for a Chromecast or Apple TV?
Any discussion of intent is always going to be speculation. All we can think about is what such a thing would be capable of if it were somehow malicious. The first possibility that comes to my mind would be sniffing Ethernet MAC addresses because it could be done without any sort of device-specific support built in to the app. Assuming your local devices’ manufacturers are following Da Rulez, the first part of their…
Straight to the IOT isolation network
They used to check your clipboard the whole time too. They use the local network as one of their sensors to identify you (fingerprinting). However they have plenty more (see their privacy policy).
To be fair quite a lot of apps did this to enable deep links/automatically opening certain clipboard links. Every big app has changed this to no longer show the 'pasted from' notification. And it was never shown that they export those clipboard contents to homebase.