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TikTok requests access to devices on local network

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Re: TikTok requests access to devices on local network

#151

Post by giantrobot »

reillyse wrote: post #141
giantrobot wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK Calm and Insight don't have hundreds of millions of users nor is the CCP on their corporate boards. But with explanations provided by the apps as to why they want network device access they probably shouldn't be trusted. As for the data collection, TikTok/ByteDance is definitely going to store it. They wouldn't collect it otherwise. To the utility of the data, if they've got MAC addresses of devices on your hom…

My point is that this just appears to be xenophobia and is completely hypocritical. Nearly every app on my phone asks to access the local network.It's a thing. It's not unusual in the slightest. The problem seems to be that this company is based in China. And we don't like China. Maybe that is not what you in particular don't like (I get that you don't like FB) but that is the reason why this is a topic conversation…

> The problem seems to be that this company is based in China.

You're misrepresenting the situation because you want to frame the whole issue as some xenophobia on my part. The problem is TikTok is a social network with millions of users whose parent company literally has the CCP as a board member and is subject to China's extremely invasive state security laws (requiring warrantless access to corporate data). The app was already an intelligence gold mine and now they've added a vein of platinum.

The only double standard is contained within the strawman you've created. I have the same problem with Facebook or Twitter apps scanning my local network for no reason than to increase their data harvesting. But since TikTok is the subject of the thread I specifically pointed out problems with TikTok. Facebook and Twitter have their own problems, some of them overlap with problems that exist with TikTok.

Neither I or anyone else needs to list the myriad problems with every social network when criticizing any one of them. You're trying to use a tu quoque [0] argument claiming xenophobia and hypocrisy (where none exists) in hopes that distracts from the points being made.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Re: TikTok requests access to devices on local network

#152

Post by sam0x17 »

vineyardmike wrote: post #87
sam0x17 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also just take the collection of devices typically on the network, hash the MAC addresses all together, and now you have a unique identifier for a household

has the mac's and use a bloom filter, look for overlaps across time/accounts.

I'm overthinking it though. You'd probably get more mileage out of just looking for individual MAC addresses, full stop.

Re: TikTok requests access to devices on local network

#153

Post by 3np »

sunshineforever wrote: post #142
swiley wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a clear violation of the CFAA. This crime carries prison time. How come they threw teenagers in prison but not the people responsible for doing it en mass?

Wait, so using a program like wireshark to scan a network is illegal in and of itself?? I thought you had to use the information nefariously for there to be a crime. How can receiving broadcasts be illegal?

Wireshark is passively listening on incoming traffic, so no.

Running tools like nmap have gotten people in trouble though, and it varies by country.

https://nmap.org/book/legal-issues.html

Re: TikTok requests access to devices on local network

#154

Post by qwerty456127 »

TchoBeer wrote: post #109

This shouldn't be news, tons of apps do this; I suspect it's for something like Chromecasting, maybe it collects telemetry too?, either way not at all specific to TikTok.

> Chromecasting

IMHO the OS or some common proxy app should take care of this. Yes, Chromecasting is a legitimate case and it's nice of TikTok or any other relevant app to offer such a feature but I don't trust random (let alone Chinese) app vendors to scan my home network.

Re: TikTok requests access to devices on local network

#155

Post by phkahler »

Spivak wrote: post #99
phkahler wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> They used to check your clipboard the whole time too. That's a design error on the UI side. An app should not have read access to the clipboard, it should have the ability to accept data from the clipboard when the user pastes it.

The problem is with clipboard access is because apps abuse it not because it's a problem that have read access at all. Google Maps pulling my clipboard which has an address in it as the top suggestion for destinations is a good thing and respect the user's time.

>> The problem is with clipboard access is because apps abuse it not because it's a problem that have read access at all. Google Maps pulling my clipboard which has an address in it as the top suggestion for destinations is a good thing and respect the user's time.

You can't have it both ways. Malicious apps are going to abuse it. In order to avoid that there needs to be access control at the very least - Google maps could get whitelisted for example.

Having a helpful use-case doesn't make it not a security issue.

Re: TikTok requests access to devices on local network

#156

Post by snapetom »

SllX wrote: post #128
snapetom wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but Let's Go and Pokeball were released years ago. Go Plus was released almost Day 1, if I recall. All of those connect via Bluetooth and never required a network. They all still work just fine if you deny PoGo the permission to access devices.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this the same dialog that pops up for Bluetooth devices or am I missing something? I haven’t used my Pokeball Plus since about a month after I bought it, which was basically day or week 1, but if I recall correctly the mandate to ask for permissions only came around after that time frame and I would expect it the next time I pulled it out. But if it does work without Bluetooth permi…

No, it's definitely different. The Bluetooth permissions come up whenever you pair a new Pokeball/Go Plus/3rd Party Device like Gotcha. It strictly asks if you want to pair a new Bluetooth device.

The network discovery is different. iOS will popup a dialog saying something like, "Pokemon Go wants to discover other devices on your network" or something like that, which is what this story is about. I believe it pops up once when you install and sign up, but then it never asks again.

Re: TikTok requests access to devices on local network

#157

Post by SllX »

snapetom wrote: post #156
SllX wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this the same dialog that pops up for Bluetooth devices or am I missing something? I haven’t used my Pokeball Plus since about a month after I bought it, which was basically day or week 1, but if I recall correctly the mandate to ask for permissions only came around after that time frame and I would expect it the next time I pulled it out. But if it does work without Bluetooth permi…

No, it's definitely different. The Bluetooth permissions come up whenever you pair a new Pokeball/Go Plus/3rd Party Device like Gotcha. It strictly asks if you want to pair a new Bluetooth device. The network discovery is different. iOS will popup a dialog saying something like, "Pokemon Go wants to discover other devices on your network" or something like that, which is what this story is about. I believe it pops up…

I see. In that case I stand corrected. Thanks!

Re: TikTok requests access to devices on local network

#158

Post by alerighi »

t0ps0il wrote: post #110
alerighi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That thing makes it annoying for the kind of applications my company does, that needs to communicate with other devices on the local network. It's annoying because it's not like other permissions, where you can ask the OS to prompt the user, and check if the user granted it or not, but it's some special permission. If the user, by mistake because it doesn't know that it's needed, doesn't give it one time it's impossi…

> It's annoying because it's not like other permissions Normally if I want to use a permission, say location, I need to provide a value for given permission in my app's `info.plist` file, and if I don't and the app tries to grab the current location, it crashes with logs yelling at me to provide a description for the location privacy key. With local network permissions it's different. I've never had to do any local n…

Probably because they introduced it afterwards, and thus to not break compatibility with all other apps they tried to make it transparent to the developer. Except it's not.

I get that Apple is going into the direction of forbidding local LAN communication because they want you to implement Homekit protocol in the hardware, except that is a pain, requires certification of the hardware and requires a physical chip inside the hardware.

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