Google and TikTok sitting is a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G

First comes love, then comes marriage

Then comes a baby in a baby carriage

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I see this every time I need to manually update some apps...

Lol why do you have tiktok installed

@electrineer I was curious for a bit what the American version looked like...vs the Chinese one.

Mentioning tiktok is an instant down vote.

Why the hell would you willingly install Chinese spyware on your device? For some funny videos?

@Root have you ever seen people acting sensible?

@Root hm... Why is it spyware though? Just because Trump said so?

@donuts reddit said it ^^

@donuts isn't all non-open social media spyware at this point

@electrineer by that logic owning a smartphone is spyware too since it has a gps tracker... That you assume can be turned off but....

@donuts Yep. Devices that everyone carries in their pocket all the time, keeps charged and never turns off, that has GPS, a microphone, fingerprint sensor, cameras, facial recognition, phone and SMS capabilities, WiFi/Cellular/Bluetooth, etc.? It’s a surveillance state’s wet dream. If you don’t believe at least someone is doing their damndest to spy on you through it, you’re crazy. And is it really a stretch to think that various governments have agreements with the hardware/software developers, too?

@electrineer Social media is also essentially spyware. That’s literally their business model: provide a “free” service where users donate their data and interactions, do everything they can to encourage that behavior and increase usage, datamine the hell out of everything they have access to, and sell that to advertisers and any other interested buyers, such as research firms, political groups, etc. It’s win-win-win as long as people don’t care about their privacy — and they really don’t.

@donuts Because TikTok actively tracks you. It tracks what you like and don’t like, how you interact with the app, where you go and what you do with your phone while the app is running, scans your media, contacts, etc. And, as it’s controlled by the Chinese government, you can pretty safely assume they receive the aggregate data. I also wonder if it actively listens to you, though that’s just speculation. Then again, Google already does this.

@seplayer People acting sensible? It’s rare, but sometimes!

@donuts You can’t turn off Google’s location tracking. You can turn off GPS and WiFi and put the device into airplane mode, but Android will still track you via the strength of nearby WiFi networks it sees, and dump this data when it has a connection again. Even when scrambled, this is still easily enough to personally identify you.

My recommendation: de-googled Android, such as Graphene, Lineage, or Sailfish. Or if you’re really a nerd and want nerd cred and to continually fight with your device, Arch/Debian on a Pinephone.

Ah yes, Chinese spyware advertising marxist propaganda

@Root there are projects like Mastodon that should fix that though

@donuts There's an article written by an InfoSec specialist who looked under the hood of the app and saw all the dodgy anti-reverse engineering and data capture stuff it was doing.
It was posted a while ago and can't recall where and don't have access to the history of the device I used at the time.

@Berkmann18 then why does Google still allow it... And well what your saying seems to describe Facebook too...

@donuts That's a good point; I don't know. That's a question for them.

@Berkmann18 They could be paid off. Or perhaps it doesn’t actually violate their terms if e.g. everything is disclosed in the privacy policy users agree to upon installing or signing up.

@Berkmann18 I remember this, too. The security team at work posted it in slack some time ago, along with a very stern warning to never install TikTok on a company device.

@Root Possibly yeah, I haven't installed the app, so I don't know how transparent TikTok is with what it accesses.
Yeah, I've seen companies banning that app alongside others like FaceApp (that Russian face collection app disguised as an "age yourself" app).