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Gone are the days when Myspace was the only social media platform around and your choices were limited if you wanted to connect with hundreds of people at one time. With an explosion of apps designed to keep you in contact with friends, family, and millions of strangers, you have to be even more selective and careful about the ones you let into your orbit. But there’s one platform that many tech experts agree is a good one to banish from your life if you’re interested in protecting your data and privacy. This is the social media app you need to delete, according to experts.
Thanks to endless short videos that play on a continuous loop, TikTok has rapidly gained a massive following in a short amount of time. But the app is also popping up on the radars of many a tech and security expert.
“TikTok is [a] platform that collects a ton of information on its users,” says Aimee O’Driscoll, security researcher with Comparitech. “Some of that is only collected if you provide permission, but there is a long list of data that is automatically gathered.”
You might be surprised to learn just how much data TikTok is collecting on its users. “[It] includes message content (TikTok scans and analyzes your in-platform communications), device information, location data (based on your IP address and/or SIM card), and content metadata (such as when and by whom it was produced),” O’Driscoll says. “It also allows other companies to track your online activities and maintains no responsibility for the privacy practices of its partners. While it’s possible to tweak some settings, with TikTok being primarily used for video, it’s inevitably heavy on data and battery usage.”
Imani Francies, a digital security expert with InsuranceProviders.com, agrees that TikTok is the social media platform to avoid — not just for your own privacy, but the privacy of children. “When it comes to ensuring child safety online, you could never be too safe since most individuals who want to harm children, like traffickers, use social media platforms to lure children in,” Francies says. “TikTok made the National Center on Sexual Exploitation's ‘dirty dozen’ list in 2020. The advocacy group explains that the platform's minimal effort to moderate content leads to the potential sexual grooming from sex traffickers and abusers. Abusers can comment or message minors, some requesting sexually explicit content, and TikTok's safety controls are not set to intervene with such interaction between minors and adults.”
In terms of privacy, Francies says TikTok users can switch their profiles to private after it is automatically set to public. “The app does not ask for the city, state, or country of residence of the user,” Francies says. “The user's phone number and email address also remain private. However, the issue of privacy is at the same level as every other social media site and without TikTok being readily monitored, someone can easily hack this information.”
