If at any point in your history on TikTok you have seen a video that happened to have the label “LGBT” or derivatives, the company may have your name listed somewhere in their database. A report from wsj This is how he reveals it, and his source would be a former employee of the Chinese company ByteDance.
Not only would your name be on a list within the company, but TikTok has been monitoring the accounts that have come across content with these labels in their section For you. This surveillance would have lasted for at least a year, according to the source of the report.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, this information was not a secret to anyone within ByteDance. In fact, TikTok employees at various levels could access itand not only that, but also control the display permissions of the list.
It is clear that we are not only facing a privacy problem, but also a security one. This type of information could be used to extort money from people in countries where proving your sexual orientation is illegal.and even punishable by death.
TikTok continues to sink in the endless fight for privacy
“Protecting the privacy and security of people who use TikTok is one of our main priorities,” the company spokesperson told the aforementioned outlet. Although the company tries to sound encouraging with his words, the truth is that the problem was planted when ByteDance decided to store and list such sensitive information like this in the first place.
Fortunately, it seems that this information has already been removed from the database, at least in the United States. This is confirmed by the TikTok spokesperson.
The more TikTok is investigated, increasingly alarming data seems to come to light, as is to be expected with any high-profile social network – if not, we can ask Meta. This report marks a new chapter in the service’s never-ending fight against regulators and researchers. However, it doesn’t seem like it’s coming off very well, and each statement seems more like an attempt to salvage the situation than an actual statement.
The European Union is already investigating TikTok’s conduct regarding data handling. Meanwhile, the United States continues to work on banning the app within its borders. If they succeed, would mean the loss of 100 million users only in the North American country.