Reddit User Says Tiktok Collects User Data

While it may seem like a great alternative to American social media companies, one Reddit user who calls themselves bangorlol has suggested that TikTok is actually more invasive than any of its American competitors. The user claims that they have re-engineered TikTok, and that they are confident they have a good understanding of how the app works now. In their post, they said that TikTok is collecting a bevy of personal data from its users. 

“TikTok might not meet the exact criteria to be called ‘Malware,’ but it’s definitely nefarious and (in my humble opinion) outright evil,” the user said. “There’s a reason governments are banning it. Don’t use the app. Don’t let your children use it. Tell your friends to stop using it. It offers you nothing but a quick source of entertainment that you can get elsewhere without handing your data over to the Chinese government.” 

The user also said that the app’s primary purpose wasn’t entertainment — it was to collect information on its users. “TikTok is a data collection service that is thinly-veiled as a social network. If there is an API to get information on you, your contacts, or your device… well, they’re using it,” they wrote. The user also said that the app was designed to make it difficult to understand exactly how it worked. 

“Here’s the thing though.. they don’t want you to know how much information they’re collecting on you, and the security implications of all of that data in one place, en masse, are f–king huge,” bangorlol wrote. “They encrypt all of the analytics requests with an algorithm that changes with every update (at the very least the keys change) just so you can’t see what they’re doing.”