Imagine one day you meet a person who wants to truly understand who you are.
They are genuinely interested in everything about you: what types of media you like to consume, what political party you identify with, what types of movements or missions you are passionate about, your religious / non-religious views, what type of people you are attracted to, what type of people you are not that crazy about, what brands you like to rep, what food you like to eat, how you are feeling at a specific time of day / month / season, what types of issues you struggle with in your life, how you deal with stress, trauma, or adversity, etc…
After knowing said “friend” for an extended period of time, they seem to know you pretty well. When you talk with them you feel accepted, understood, and vindicated. They really get where you are coming from. You feel that your friend resonates with your beliefs, dreams, and goals. And they support those goals and dreams by always wanting to encourage you and support you. They are always aligned with you.
One thing I failed to mention was that the friendship is completely one sided (in your favor). Not only do you know nothing about this friend or their problems, but they never bog you down with how they feel, what issues or challenges they are facing, or even what their opinion is on things. They just want to give themselves to you, because you are so unique, special, and fascinating. They pale in comparison (you know it and they know it). The only thing they speak about is what you want to hear. The only time they speak is when you want to hear it.
In a weird way, they are incapable of needing anything. They are constantly giving, validating, reaffirming, supporting, and entertaining you. You are the only thing that matters. You are the center of their universe. You quickly realize that you experience an endless loop of warm feelings, happiness, and validation. You have made your cake and you get to eat it too. You have created a scenario where you can say something and receive the response you want to hear.
Well it turns out, you can totally find a friend like I described above. Unfortunately, this friend internalizes all the information about you, documents it, and blackmails you at an unknown time that is set to take place in the future.
*Tik-Tok enters the chat.
“Wait, wait, wait,” you say, “You just gaslit me bro! I just find cool stuff on Tik-Tok. I don’t use it like those crazy Tik-Tokers do! I only spend an hour a day on there. It really doesn’t control anything to do with my life. I just have it for the memes bro. Imagine letting an algorithm control your life and beliefs amirite?”
Now before you get all defensive and tell me how:
that’s not you, you don’t use it like that
you don’t even have it downloaded you just use a browser (wut)
that if I dared you to delete your account you would do it in a heartbeat cause you’re a sigma and live by the beat of your own drum
you purposefully watch videos you don’t want to see so the algorithm doesn’t know too much
you use Tik-Tok solely for education purposes (smh I have actually heard this one a lot)
you sometimes use a VPN to make it look like your in China cause that will break their servers (or something idk)
Social media causes major societal problems. I will not be focusing on that today. I would like to hit you with some content from Tik-Tok real quick. Let’s go through their privacy policy and break down exactly what data they collect when you use their platform.
Aside from your username, age, comments, photographs, livestreams, audio recordings, videos, and virtual item videos that you choose to create with or upload to Tik-Tok (you create content, they save the content, pretty standard), there are a few shady practices when it comes to the collection of your data.
According to the official Privacy Policy of Tik-Tok, the following information is collected:
We collect certain information about the device you use to access the Platform, such as your IP address, user agent, mobile carrier, time zone settings, identifiers for advertising purposes, model of your device, the device system, network type, device IDs, your screen resolution and operating system, app and file names and types, keystroke patterns or rhythms, battery state, audio settings and connected audio devices.
Mobile carrier? Time zone? IP address? What type of phone you have? These are all completely unnecessary for the type of app that Tik-Tok is. Screen resolution is more understandable since the content needs to be delivered to you in the right resolution.
Also, what is a “device ID”? It could be as inconsequential as a phone number or it could be as privacy invasive as the IMEI of the device in question. When an IMEI is obtained, SMS messages can be spoofed by bad actors and messages can be sent to anyone from your phone number (think hacker sends a text to your mom asking for money).
The most troubling is the collection of keystrokes. For the non-technical, this is a capture of anything and everything you type on your phone’s keyboard. Decided to search for something in your browser (maybe even in incognito mode)? Tik-Tok has access to those keystrokes. Sent a personal text to your significant other? Tik-Tok has access to those keystrokes.
We may collect information about the images and audio that are a part of your User Content, such as identifying the objects and scenery that appear, the existence and location within an image of face and body features and attributes, the nature of the audio, and the text of the words spoken in your User Content. We may collect this information to enable special video effects, for content moderation, for demographic classification, for content and ad recommendations, and for other non-personally-identifying operations. We may collect biometric identifiers and biometric information as defined under US laws, such as faceprints and voiceprints, from your User Content.
Wow. When you post content, Tik-Tok will analyze the objects and scenery in the content (think user generated Google street view data collection levels). They will also store metadata and the information from content and use it to determine the location of the content. The data is also used for demographic classification. Tik-Tok also stores the audio, the actual text of the words spoken, and the “nature of the audio” or the context. And lastly, biometric information.
In other words and to break it down, Tik-Tok is able to create a complete digital footprint, or ID if you will, for each of its users.
We collect and process, which includes scanning and analyzing, information you provide when you compose, send, or receive messages through the Platform’s messaging functionality. That information includes the content of the message and information about when the message has been sent, received and/or read, as well as the participants of the communication.
No surprise here. They see your messages. They can read them. They know who exactly you are talking to and about what.
We and our service providers and business partners may link your contact or account information with your activity on and off our Platform across all your devices, using your email or other log-in or device information.
Again, not a shock. This essentially describes a type of crawler that seeks to collect all possible information on you that it can find across the internet. For example, if you use the same email for Tik-Tok as you do for LinkedIn, assume that Tik-Tok knows where you work and knows stuff based on what it was able to gather from other “providers and business partners.”
A good practice is to use several temporary emails for services.
We may aggregate or de-identify the information described above. Aggregated or de-identified data is not subject to this Privacy Policy.
This is pretty wild. In essence, if Tik-Tok decides to “aggregate” all the information they have collected on you across different platforms, they have marked that data as not subject to the Privacy Policy.
Let’s say you signed up for Tik-Tok with the same email you use for online banking, your LinkedIn account, your dating app, your Facebook account, etc… Over time, Tik-Tok (as per their Privacy Policy) will collect that data piece by piece. If they ever wanted to aggregate the data they have on you, they can deal with the data however they please.
Insane.
We generally use the information we collect:
To use User Content as part of our advertising and marketing campaigns to promote the Platform
To inform our algorithms
Well, they pull no punches here. The content you create essentially belongs to them. They are allowed to use your content as advertising and marketing material (obviously no credit given to the creator).
They also mention they use the collected information to inform their algorithms. Except… We really know nothing about how the algorithms work since they are closed source.
TikTok may transmit your data to its servers or data centers outside of the United States for storage and/or processing. Third parties with whom TikTok may share your data as described herein may be located outside of the United States.
This is a well known security issue with Tik-Tok. I will spare you the whole story about ByteDance and its connections to the CCP, but rest assured, all the data that Tik-Tok collects is stored or at one point has been stored/processed on Chinese servers. I am 99% sure that the CCP has access to the data collected by Tik-Tok.
Scary huh? Essentially wherever you sign into Tik-Tok, data from that device is collected and stored somewhere for something.
Going back to the little analogy I made before, your ever-loving, understanding, sympathetic friend who knows everything about you, can use that information to destroy you.
In conclusion, I just wanted to shed some light on what data Tik-Tok actually has on you (it’s a lot). I have never had a Tik-Tok account and never will. If you decide to leave the platform, you should first request that they delete your information from their servers.
Personally, I have blocked Tik-Tok on my home network with my Pihole. I suggest you do the same.
Cheers,
Joe