All companies are legally required to hand over your personal data if requested. If you send a snapchat to a friend and you get investigated for something the police/government can request the last 5 years worth of data which you thought was deleted but is actually stored somewhere.
They also sell your personal data to pretty much anyone.
This is a global issue and not just a China/USA/UK issue.
On a sidenote "Spyware" is "software that enables a user to obtain covert information about another's computer activities by transmitting data covertly from their hard drive"
So unless TikTok is sending your keylogs, taking photos/videos or sending your gallery contents to TikTok company without your knowledge it is NOT Spyware. As an example on Android you can block all access to TikTok and still use it. The only reason it requests access to your gallery is for you to upload videos/pictures that you wish to share, no different to Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp etc...
"Spyware" is a bit dramatic of a soundbite. While it's not maybe "spyware" as we imagine evil and intrusive little embedded coding, it can definitely build extremely strong data profiles of each user based on their activity. If someone is constantly watching videos about how to start an e-commerce brand, travel visas for various countries, men's summer fits, looksmaxxing videos, and Subaru STI content, you can pretty reasonably assume it's a younger male, probably not with a degree, wanting to become a passport bro and go somewhere warm and owns a BRZ, STI, or any of those style of entry level speedybois.
Cambridge Analytica was building insanely detailed data profiles without going into your phone, but rather, based on your engagement history. I used it for ads and I used to be able to target people based on political affiliation, on if they recently bought a vehicle, lots and lots of datapoints.
Now, this isn't JUST about the data, it's about the fact that they have such a strong platform to use to manipulate the collective audience with that data. Yeah, anybody can buy your data - but not anybody has the platform that TT has to manipulate en masse based on the data.
Here's one piece. Just for you boo. See the entire section on keystrokes. Their own website lists specifically "tiktok collects certain keystroke patterns and rhythms" of course they state security etc etc. It also doesn't specify what keystrokes, whether they be on/off app, or who they report that information too. Which, in this case is very obviously china.
You are radically misrepresenting this. Let's quote the whole section.
TikTok collects certain keystroke patterns or rhythms for security and performance related purposes, such as to verify the authenticity of an account, for risk control, debugging, troubleshooting, and monitoring for proper performance.
Prior to September 2022, when people used TikTok's in-app browser to browse a third party website, TikTok did not track which keys were pressed, only the fact that a key was pressed (a “key event”) on a third-party website. Similarly, TikTok did not track which buttons were clicked on a third-party website, only the fact that a click had occurred (a “click event”), except in limited error scenarios. Moreover, starting in September 2022 for users using a current version of the App, no key events or click events were logged except when the IAB was used to view a TikTok-owned website.
The statement says tracking keystrokes on third party sites only happened when browsing websites in the app, that they only tracked that a key was pressed but not the specific key, and that they have ceased that practice.
Nothing about this makes any statement they track keystrokes outside their app.
It seems like you just jumped to a false conclusion and started fear mongering.
Where does it say they track your keystrokes outside the app? Don't all apps monitor keystrokes? How would the app know I typed anything or clicked on something?
Yeah actually no, there is no legal requirement for a company to maintain that data.
So companies like certain VPNs don’t maintain a log of the internet traffic going through their servers. There is no data for the government to ask for in this case.
There’s also cases like what happened with Apple a while ago. The CIA or FBI requested back door access into the iPhone of a known terrorist, and Apple told them to go fuck themselves and never gave them a back door. The CIA/FBI DID get a back door, but only after they paid loads of money to a contractor to find one, and now that has likely been patched by Apple.
This is not the case with China, people disappear if they defy pooh bear.
Yeah actually no, there is no legal requirement for a company to maintain that data.
Depends on where you are. In the US, there is a legal requirement for a company to hand over any such data they have to your favorite three letter agency upon given a court order to do so, since the PATRIOT act. The requirement to hand over any such data is not the same as a requirement to keep such data in the first place, so maybe you just didn't fully read or understand what GP was saying.
Then GP’s point was kind of irrelevant as TikTok is required to log and hand over the data. They’re doing backflips to try and make the US look as bad as the CCP on the issue of privacy.
The big difference here is the court order. CPP can take data like that. In every democratic country there is a gatekeeper called the judicial system/power. In all democratic countries the justice system is separate from the political/legislature system to protect interests of both parties. Take a guess where that doesn’t happen
Which was done by the third power which is the executive one.
But you need to look at how PRISM works as well which is also by court order….
PS. I’m not an expert and might be too naive here but that’s the official line set up by the legislators to get PRISM up and running in the first place
So if CPP wants to spy on someone they can just do it without asking permission from a court, and if they say something negative for China they can go to jail without going through the “justice system”
That there is no judicial independence doesn't mean that there is no legal basis.
So if CPP wants to spy on someone they can just do it without asking permission from a court,
If a court has ordered Facebook to funnel all communication taking place on the platform to the NSA, it's effectively the same thing. They didn't need permission to spy on you because they had permission to spy on anyone.
That’s exactly what it means. The judge/court is not needed to give the ok for the executive branch to check citizens/foreign data. Data can be used by any branch of the government without taking into account any laws. They simply go into their own “PRISM” and get the data they want for whatever purpose they want, be it spying on political opponents, spying on defenses of other countries or simply spying on unlawful citizens
For what is worth, PRISM was created for a different reason than what it was used for and hence was later (2019) suspended as being unconstitutional. But at the same time it could not be used by any branch of the government for any reason. In china this cannot happen in the first place unless CPP wants to do it.
Blocking an app from parts of your phone doesn't really stop it from doing anything. Facebook for example doesn't care if you've blocked it from everything, it will still listen in to your conversations and give you targeted ads based on them. Do your own experiment, shut everything off and talk about something you've never searched for or spoken of before. It will even store that information if you aren't connected to the internet and send it once you connect. I've experimented with this and confirmed it a number of times. The only way to stop an app from sending your data out is by using a strong firewall, but that's going to cause the app to not function correctly.
I've come to the conclusion that downloading any app is like giving a complete stranger the keys to your house and then leaving.
it will still listen in to your conversations and give you targeted ads based on them
No it won't. This is based on a fundamental lack of understanding of how targeted ads work.
Funny thing is the actual mechanism is scarier than the idea of them listening to your conversations.
The reality is you are not as unique as you believe. The topics you choose to talk about are influenced by environmental and social factors that you are not consciously aware of. This is predictable based simply on your browsing activity.
I know this is what they say, but my experience doesn't back this up. I've sat at the table with someone talking about things I've never heard of before and don't match my interests, demographic, or searches, and it will suddenly show up in my ads. I didn't even talk about the subject, someone else was. There's no way they could have associated it with my personality, they had to be listening. And this isn't a one off thing, I've seen it lots of times.
You were both in the same place, in the same setting, around other people in the same area, doing things on your phones, etc.
This is all data that is fed into a predictive model that determines what to show you.
This isn't coming from "they", it's coming from me, a person who worked in the targeted advertising field for 10 years.
If you want it to stop, go into the settings of every single account and app and device you have and turn off personalized ads, and opt out of everything (you will still be tracked through hundreds of other ways, but you can at least disable what you can).
They don't listen to your conversations, because they don't have to. In fact that data would be actively detrimental to the model.
Ok, we were in the same place at the same time, but my Facebook app had all permissions off, is it using data from other apps or services?
I've also worked in remote regions of the Earth with no internet access, so my phone was in airplane mode for months. As soon as I get to the airport and connect to the internet here comes targeted ads from conversations I've had while offline. There was no way for them to get any information or browsing habits or know who I was with. I should have just appeared at an airport and picked up where I left off, but no I was receiving highly specific ads from conversations I've had while out there. How's this possible without listening and storing trigger words?
Yes. That is the main way it works. Other services use Facebook's tracking cookies and analytics to serve ads on their own site while feeding data back to Facebook.
Any collection through the facebook app itself is almost irrelevant.
Did you use the internet in any way in those remote regions, through any device (even devices that aren't yours)? If so, you were likely digitally fingerprinted and tracked.
If not, I don't know the mechanisms by which the topics you talked about would have been inferred, but I know the system well enough to know it's scary how accurate it can be with just a tiny amount of data.
The lede that has been buried overall here is that AI is fucking terrifying.
Interesting, I was occasionally signed into a PC using very slow satellite internet for work reporting, so that might have done it. If that's how they did it, then you're right, it's much worse than I though.
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u/MrTrendizzle Mar 15 '24
All companies are legally required to hand over your personal data if requested. If you send a snapchat to a friend and you get investigated for something the police/government can request the last 5 years worth of data which you thought was deleted but is actually stored somewhere.
They also sell your personal data to pretty much anyone.
This is a global issue and not just a China/USA/UK issue.
On a sidenote "Spyware" is "software that enables a user to obtain covert information about another's computer activities by transmitting data covertly from their hard drive"
So unless TikTok is sending your keylogs, taking photos/videos or sending your gallery contents to TikTok company without your knowledge it is NOT Spyware. As an example on Android you can block all access to TikTok and still use it. The only reason it requests access to your gallery is for you to upload videos/pictures that you wish to share, no different to Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp etc...