We Found 28,000 Apps Sending TikTok Data. Banning the App Won't Help | Hacker News Reader

We Found 28,000 Apps Sending TikTok Data. Banning the App Won't Help

gizmodo.com

75 pointsbelter24 comments

There are some really good findings about TikTok APK used in many apps. In addition I agree that better privacy laws that would affect all companies, even US ones, would be the ideal.

The statement that this ban won't help is completely wrong though. Passing universal privacy laws will take years, if ever. Banning TikTok has bipartisan appeal. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Tiktok can still influence people through the feed and collect even more data through the app itself.

Obviously we should work towards a privacy law around this, but this is a reasonable first step to address the most dangerous actor.

Maybe I missed it but I was hoping this would have a link to a git repo with all the domains used to send data back to China. I assume they must use some obscure names. I log all the queries for my household.

[Edit] I think I found a list of their domains [1] Nothing in my query logs.

[1] - https://www.netify.ai/resources/applications/tiktok

I would hope that any law “banning TikTok” would include all their services not just the main app bundle.

To be clear here I’m saying I would expect a ban of company X, for any X, to include every service from X not just their main app.

I’m not entirely convinced of a compelling argument in favour of banning TikTok specifically that does not also apply to Facebook, etc - e.g FB and co have both been used to perform illegal spying on “non US citizens” in other countries, just as the US is accusing China of doing with TikTok.

The difference between Facebook and TikTok is at least the US government (can) control it.

Are China and the US interchangeable in your view?

In my (Canadian) view my data going to the US is a lot worse.

From a physical safety perspective, I'm unlikely to ever go to China, but I do sometimes have to fly in to or through the US. In doing so I risk being held in solidarity confinement and extradited to a another country to be tortured (see Maher Arar). Or perhaps held in some prison with no rights because it's just slightly outside the US, and again tortured depending on the daily definition of what's not actually torture. That I haven't actually done anything doesn't seem to matter very much.

Plus a large amount of my data already passes through the US, where it's collected. Because I'm not an American I'm not even afforded the little bit of privacy protection of this data. For example it's not easy to use my Canadian voip provider without the traffic being routing through the US.

The US is also a much larger threat to country's sovereignty than China is. For example they've basically forced my government to hand over Canadian bank account data unless citizens explicitly decree that they're not from the US. They've forced through ridiculous DRM and drug laws.

>From a physical safety perspective, I'm unlikely to ever go to China

Are you happy to rule out transiting in Hong Kong? How confident are you that none of your immediate family will ever go to China?

I can't see it for me, but who knows. The same holds for my family though, they're much more likely to deal with the US government than China.

I maybe should add that I'm not saying I like any of the general data collection, and I'm not saying I think the risk is high that either government will 'disappear' me/family. I just read the article expecting to read about behaviour that was beyond what other companies were doing, but I didn't see it. I'd be willing to entertain that there's more the US intelligence knows but aren't saying though.

This is what a lot of people do not underestand. "US is our friend". Yes, it is, until an obscure system (AI ?) flags you as a terrorist. Then, good luck with your life.

Couldn't this just be developers wanting to retarget ads on TikTok (and Facebook and Google and Twitter). And if so it's usually done by sending a non reversible hash which only has meaning if they already have data

So i've never used TikTok but I really don't like banning software because it's chinese. I know they do it to us, but i want to live in the United States not China so I don't _want_ us to do the same things they do. Privacy regulations make a lot of sense but arbitrarily banning an app because it's chinese doesn't sit right with me

This debate has nothing to do with racism.

What if instead of Tencent the parent company of TikTok, a state-sponsored social media app created by the CCP was the most popular social media app used by the future American generation. Would you still feel comfortable with this?

It's important to understand that in China the government has complete control of the private sector... If you want to have a business in China you have to jump when they say jump.

Is this bad? yes Is It worse than Google and Meta’s SDKs being present in every app? no, it’s just as bad

For US users it’s probably worse. As much as we may think our government doesn’t like us, the Chinese government likes us much less.

Is this true? I've thought a lot about this of whether it's better for domestic or foreign intelligence services to have your data. Like, yeah foreigners likely have less regard for me but it's not like the CIA gives a shit about my life. And they're much more able to act on any information they have compared to the CCP.

That being said, it's probably mostly academic because in reality it's likely that my information is accessible by both types haha

> no, it’s just as bad

Google and Apple are capturing data from milions of apps.

Apps embed the TikTok SDK so they can see ad conversions. If they can't serve ads (because there's no app), they won't have a reason to send it data

How do we fix the platforms ios/android, from allowing sensitive data to be exfiltrated to any actor/ad network/data purveyor?

I wonder if ReVanced can be used to block analytics and data sharing. I wanted to play with patches to understand how they work but never got around to it.

Or use piped, a youtube proxy, and libretube, it's interface for android

piped : https://docs.piped.video/docs/why/

I was specifically talking about patching any other app, which ReVanced supports to block ads and add feature, but instead create a patch that blocks tracking.

Anyone from Privacy International reading this?

The organisation did some research about the Facebook SDK few years ago, maybe its time to repeat it for tiktok?

Meaning "sending data to TikTok"

Ban the domains too.

I mean, yeah, just don’t do phone inspections and go straight for the wire. Poison the DNS, cut any known IP ranges, and snoop on SNI for good measure. That’s the school and enterprise way of doing it. It’s not that evil as long as you don’t use it on unconsenting civilians (see China)!

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