The risks of TikTok: what data does the app collect and how to set it up safe for children

TikTok is one of the most popular apps in the world. with close to billion users resources, the short video platform has managed to establish itself as one of the most used, especially by young people. However, it faces worldwide censorship issues, led by the United States and several plans to ban it. Now, what kind of collected user information the app and why they accuse it of being one dangerous?

These questions were used as a banner to limit the use of the application in the West. Canada, the United States, or even the European Union have banned it in official government arrangements, and among the reasons given for doing so are laws that allow the Chinese government to secretly request data from Chinese companies and citizens for intelligence operations. bytedancethe owner of TikTok, is a Chinese company.

While arguing, they are also concerned that the eastern country may use TikTok’s content recommendations to misinform, which the company’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, denied before the United States Congress.

And America wants more: Early last month, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to pass a bill that could give a president the authority to ban the platform altogether.

For these reasons, the application has become central and it is essential to try to understand which user data it collects first and which it shares second.

It is likely, however, that the precautions that need to be taken with TikTok They are the same ones that you need to carry with any social networknot just with the Byte Dance-owned app.

What TikTok says: the official word

consulted by clarionthe company, which does not yet have a local representation –is opening offices in Argentina in these months-, he limited himself to sharing the company’s privacy policy. That is, they did not answer specific questions with a company spokesperson.

More words, less words, the company guarantees it can collect everything that the user has accepted when registering the account– profile information, user information, direct messages, in-app purchase information, phone and social media contacts, and even proof of identity (if provided) as a personal document.

But in addition to this information that you provide yourself, TikTok also collects data automatically: the position of the mobile device, the cookiesand user-produced images and audio. All of this can be seen on their official privacy policy page.

“We take into consideration that these services require location access (some even try to keep this permission for a long time), of microphoneTHE camera and also our contacts (often promoted in a more friendly way: “Synchronization of contacts” or “Find your acquaintances on this platform”), warns Emmanuel Di Battista, a security analyst at BCA LTD, a cybersecurity company.

There is an equally important fact, the expert points out: third party exposure. “In the latter case we do not display ‘our’ contacts but to our contacts: Are we allowed to release this information? Does our contact really want to be synced or ‘invited’ to another platform or social network? Do you have the ability to delete this information irresponsibly shared by a third party (us) and without your consent?

“This is repeated in most social networking services, and even many of them don’t allow ‘granularity’ in permissions (they discriminate one by one), but either we accept all of them or we don’t use the app,” he says.

Of course, application usage telemetry is one of the most important points and what explains the accuracy of the platform’s recommendation algorithmone of the most powerful in the world, which is actively managed by the company’s employees.

TikTok: what the report warns about and what precautions must be taken

Internet 2.0 is the Australian information security company that has warned that the situation is more serious than it seems. “When the application is in use, it has far more permissions than it really needs,” Robert Potter, co-executive director of the report, explained in an interview with British outlet The Guardian.

“Grant these permissions by default. When a user doesn’t grant permission, TikTok asks for it insistently. If you tell Facebook that you don’t want to share something, it won’t ask you again. TikTok is much more aggressive in this sense,” the expert had argued. For this reason they qualify it as “too intrusive.”

“Maybe talking about ‘danger’ when using an app like TikTok is a bit of an exaggeration, what’s a problem when we expose our profiles too muchour privacy, our data, the life of our family and of others, because that’s where the risk of losing the right to privacy comes into play, the risk of being monitored, the risk of being monitored”, he explains in dialogue with clarion Beatriz Busaniche, president of the Vía Libre Foundation and specialist in privacy and right to information.

This is a problem not just for TikTok, but for tech giants in general. “Companies have an obligation to respect the laws of each country in which they operate that have to do with the protection of the data of their citizens, who will be users of these services,” explains Carolina Martínez Elebi, a graduate in Communications from the University of Buenos Aires and founder of DHYTecno.

“It also passes the protection of privacy the security of the information they process. This, as we have seen in recent years, is increasingly being violated even in large companies that one would expect to have more robust cyber security development,” he criticizes.

In fact, several tech giants have experienced cybersecurity incidents that exposed users’ personal data. “In the last few years alone, we have had several cybersecurity incidents involving social networks. In 2021, scrappers abused Facebook’s “Import Contacts” feature to extract private information from millions of accounts. in 2022 Chirping suffered a similar data breach at the hands of scrappers, who abused its API for collect information from millions of users”, recalls Di Battista.

For all these problems, it’s always better think twice what permissions an app is grantedwhat it will be used for and what we will reveal with each personal post we make.

TikTok: Advice for the use of the youngest

For the use of minors and, above all, of infants, TikTok allows you to configure certain problems for safe use. This is not a minor problem due to the dangerous viral challenges which, in many cases, have ended in tragedies.

The app lets you set up accounts like “private” by default for children under 15, unlike older users, whose profiles are public by default. It also restricts the download of content created by people under the age of 16, unless manually changed in the settings.

The problem is that while the official minimum age for TikTok users is 13, there is no verification mechanism for this restriction.

From the computer security company ESET they recommend using one of the features offered by TikTok called “Family Sync. “It connects the kids’ profile with that of their tutors, meaning they can control direct messages, set screen time limits, as well as turn sensitive content on and off directly,” they say.

“It is a useful tool that the application offers so that parents can have some control over the content their children consume, as well as who they can interact with online. It’s TikTok’s version of parental controls,” explains Sol Gonzalez of ESET Latin America.

Thus, TikTok’s reach is so great that the competition has copied the idea in all its forms, from Instagram reels to YouTube shorts.

For this reason, perhaps the biggest risk the company poses is to the application market governed by giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple. Which doesn’t mean you don’t have to take precautions, the same ones you have to take with Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.