TikTok Can Circumvent Apple and Google Privacy Protections

It’s hard to tell without knowing exactly what the app is doing, but it’s entirely possible.

A lot of the guidelines are hard or impossible to police, and rely on developers following the “honor” system.

For example, Apple's App Review does not – and cannot – know what really happens to your data once an app has access to it.

If the iOS app is downloading code which it then executes, thus allowing the developers to push changes while bypassing App Review, it would absolutely be a violation of section 2.5.2 of the App Store guidelines [0].

[0]: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#sof...