During these desperate times, many Ugandans and people allover the world have resorted to Tik Tok,mobile App, known for its quirky 15-second videos but is your data and personal privacy safe?
A few months ago Tik Tok was accused of illegally and secretly harvesting vast amounts of personally identifiable user data and sending it to China, according to a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in California federal court.
The lawsuit also accuses the company and its Chinese parent company ByteDance of taking user content such as draft videos without their consent and having "ambiguous" privacy policies. It raises concerns that data gathered by TikTok could be used to identify, profile and track users in the US. The company is benefiting from this alleged activity because it uses this data to sell targeted ads, the lawsuit alleges.
"TikTok's lighthearted fun comes at a heavy cost," according to the lawsuit, which was filed.
The allegations against the popular short video app are the latest example of the growing security concerns surrounding TikTok, which surpassed almost 2 billion downloads worldwide.
TikTok videos often include close-ups of people's faces, allowing the company to gather biometric data on its users, according to the lawsuit. Once a user shoots a video and clicks the "next" button, the videos are transferred to various domains without their knowledge. This happens before users even save or post a video on the app, the lawsuit states.
TikTok is gathering a trove of data about its users, including their phone and social network contacts, email addresses, IP address, location and other information, according to the lawsuit. The company allegedly uses different tactics to conceal that they're transferring user data. Even when a user closes the app, it still harvests biometric and user data, the lawsuit states.
Citing articles from news outlets such as CNBC, Quartz and Affinity Magazine, the lawsuit alleges user data was sent to China. It lists several Chinese servers the data was transferred to before and after February 2019.
