Should the Us Ban Tiktok?: March 23, when members of Congress called on the federal government to ban the Chinese social media video chain, announced that Biden’s power had been seized.
sell the company. The federal government and many states and foreign governments and other organizations have banned TikTok from mobile phones. Such restrictions may be used to protect information related to government operations.
Should the Us Ban Tiktok?
But banning the application is a problem that raises many questions: What is the risk of TikTok to personal data? What can the Chinese government do with the data collected by the program? Is your content recommendation algorithm vulnerable?
And is it possible to cancel the program? Data leaks As a cybersecurity researcher, I have seen the launch of new mobile applications every few years that raise issues of security, privacy, and data access. Apps collect data for many reasons.
Sometimes the information is used to improve the program for the user. However, many programs collect data that companies use to finance their operations. Revenue is usually generated by targeting users and advertising based on the information they collect.
Data in the Chinese Government’s Hands
Data processing raises the following question: Does the application need all this information? What do you do with the data? And how can we protect the privacy of others? So how is TikTok different from Pokemon GO, Facebook, or your phone? Companies are usually not very transparent about their activities. This article is too long to list all the data here, which should be a warning.
TikTok’s privacy policy includes several ways to improve the information you provide when creating an account: name, age, username, password, language, and email. email address, phone number, social media information, and profile picture.
Can the Government Ban an App?
This information includes location information, your clipboard information, contact information, tracking sites, and data you send and messages you send through the Application. The company says the current version of the app does not collect GPS data from US users. TikTok has been shown to collect some data, but it is difficult to confirm.
With so many apps collecting data, is the US government concerned about TikTok? First, they are concerned about the Chinese government’s access to its 150 million workers in the United States. There are also concerns about the algorithm TikTok uses to display content.
The government can share it with other Chinese companies to help them profit, unlike American companies that share business data. The Chinese government is known to play the long game with powerful data, so when the data is collected, it will take years to see how China benefits.
Another potential risk is that the Chinese government uses data to take advantage of people, especially those with sensitive information. The Justice Department is investigating TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, for allegedly using the app to spy on American journalists.
The Chinese government has a long history of hacking into US government agencies and companies, and many of these hacks have been enabled by social engineering, the practice of manipulating people’s personal information to manipulate them.
Are you at risk?
The second issue raised by the US government is algorithmic bias or false algorithms. TikTok and most social media platforms have algorithms to identify user interests and try to tailor content based on their use of the app.
TikTok doesn’t share its algorithm, so it’s unclear how the app ranks user content. Algorithms can be biased in ways that affect people’s beliefs about certain things