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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

#51

Post by stronglikedan »

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…

> 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 as hell aren't outright trying to hide exactly whats being sent like TikTok is. It's like comparing a cup of water to the ocean - they just don't compare.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news...

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

#52

Post by nsxwolf »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #5

Too little, too late. Already forced the family to uninstall it and its gone forever. Wish the kids could understand that its spyware with access to a lot of toxic social media.

My Daughter: "Dad let me install TikTok!"

Me: "No. It is Chinese spyware."

My Daughter: " has TikTok!"

Me: " is a Chinese asset!"

My Daughter: "No she's not!"

Every day.

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

#53

Post by stronglikedan »

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?

I would really, really miss the clipboard on my phone were it not there. I use it daily.

Also, I couldn't imagine having to use the 'share' functionality just to copy/paste. It's already such a frustrating experience just finding the app I want to share with, that I usually just end up selecting the 'copy link' option, opening the target app, and pasting it.

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

#54

Post by erk__ »

ebg13 wrote: post #36
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…

> In China WeChat blocks direct links to their competitors. So apps like Taobao or Douyin have to find a workaround for deeplinks. I'm going to start by saying "No they don't." They don't _have_ to do anything. They decided to. > In WeChat the link is not clickable. To see the content user has to copy full text and go to the Douyin. The app will read the clipboard They could have chosen to give you a place to put lin…

They do it to get around very anti competitive behaviour. WeChat pretty much have monopoly on chat in China so if you want to get into that market I guess you have to come up with some way around it. Though I agree that a button that would activate it would likely have been a better way to do it. Even if they did not do anything nefarious this really makes it look like it was.

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

#56

Post by gruez »

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…

>In June 2015, the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that it had been the target of a data breach targeting the records of as many as four million people

I'm pretty sure that tiktok has more than 4M users. I guess you can argue that OPM has more % of "high value" users compared to tiktok, but it's also 5 years out of date and contains different sets of data entirely. OPM data doesn't have your minute-by-minute location history and clipboard history, for instance.

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

#57

Post by vulcan01 »

nsxwolf wrote: post #52
annoyingnoob wrote: post #5

Too little, too late. Already forced the family to uninstall it and its gone forever. Wish the kids could understand that its spyware with access to a lot of toxic social media.

My Daughter: "Dad let me install TikTok!" Me: "No. It is Chinese spyware." My Daughter: " has TikTok!" Me: " is a Chinese asset!" My Daughter: "No she's not!" Every day.

In my experience it is a lot easier to tell your friends that you don't have any social media, rather than saying that you don't have a specific social media app/account/thing. Why? It's harder to understand why someone wouldn't install TikTok when they already have Snapchat/Instagram/everything else.

(I'm a high school student, abstaining from social media other than HN.)

Edit: Have you tried explaining to your daughter why TikTok is Chinese spyware?

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

#58

Post by godelski »

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…

> Bit I wonder why everyone talking about one specific app? I see a huge bias towards TikTok in headlines

1) TikTok is one of the most popular apps and was the second most downloaded last year [0]. Come on, they are at the top. That's why we talk about them.

2) TikTok has been caught in a lot of privacy scandals that appear to be more egregious than other apps.

3) There's a deep seated fear, and evidence, that Chinese companies share their data with their government.

It is all three, but mostly #1.

> [0][1]

These are the same event, why are you posting two instances of the same event like "TikTok is unfairly being targeted?"

> There a bunch of apps like VICE, Google News, WSJ that has been caught doing exactly the same. [2]

People are upset about that too. But frankly, VICE and the WSJ don't have as many downloads as TikTok. Even if you combine their total downloads they don't account for a tenth (If you're bigger, people pay more attention to you. That's why TikTok is getting "singled out." BECAUSE TIKTOK IS ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR APPS IN THE WORLD! It doesn't matter what other apps do. That doesn't justify bad behavior. Am I the only one whose mom said "If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?"

[0] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-most-downloaded-apps...

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

#59

Post by gcbw3 »

maybe i do not know how clipboard works, but the message " pasted from " is the worst possible label.

Also funny how every app shows it. Guess IOS14 will be known by non technical users as "the cookie-law iphone version" and everything will continue as usual.

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

#60

Post by saagarjha »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #17
Shank wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Already forced the family to uninstall it and its gone forever. Honestly you’d be better off educating them and telling them it’s a good idea than forcing them to jettison an app they probably love. Tons of apps do this (as discovered in iOS 14) and I highly suggest not doing a crusade against one when a lot more do it. See: https://youtu.be/pRSWdtoUAjo

Fair enough, we don't have any of the known spyware - TikTok was the only one. I was already questioning the value of TikTok before it became well known that its spyware. I won't tell you about the week of crying because someone was calling my 8 year old a 'viscogirl' after seeing something on Tiktok about it. It really looks like toxic garbage to me.

You sure it wasn't "VSCO girl"?
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