iPhone owner? TikTok is spying on you! Slap it down this way now

TikTok has been caught secretly spying on millions of iPhone users. Know how you can protect your data and passwords.

By: HT TECH
| Updated on: Aug 25 2022, 22:59 IST
TikTok
Horrific! TikTok can access all your activity on iPhone (AFP)

After Facebook parent Meta Platforms, now TikTok is under the surveillance of Felix Krause's microscope. The founder of Fastlane, an open-source tool that offers application development on iOS and Android, probed the horrible case of the Chinese app accessing users' passwords. In fact, allegedly, the app allows direct access to the advertiser's site. Though it promises users of a smoother experience, it is not risk free. As per the report published by Forbes, TikTok is adding lines of JavaScript code to sites visited on iOS to display more targeted advertisements. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok all use this process, TikTok goes a little further by accessing everything users type on their precious iPhones.

Tiktok can access to your passwords on iPhones

Felix Krause, in his study published by Forbes, has shared that the code integrated by TikTok can access users' movements on the web, even the passwords as well. It keeps a track of everything users type on their iPhone's keyboard. Krause said, “From a technical point of view, this is equivalent to installing a keylogger on third-party websites”.

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He also added that just because an application injects JavaScript into an external website does not mean that it is doing something malicious. He stated that it is not necessary that the app is collecting the data on its servers to sell them to a third party.

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Maureen Shanahan, spokesperson for the TikTok, speaking about the same stated, “Like other platforms, we use this embedded web browser to optimize the user experience, but the Javascript code in question is only used for troubleshooting and performance monitoring. This is what allows us, for example, to check the loading speed of a page or if it is blocking.”

How to protect your passwords?

To protect your passwords and sensitive data, users are advised not to open any link when they are on TikTok. Since TikTok does not allow anyone to open it on another browser, users should copy the link and then paste it manually into another Internet browser- Firefox, Chrome, Edge etc. It is a circuitous way, but it is also the only way to hide your activity from TikTok on iPhones.

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First Published Date: 25 Aug, 22:59 IST
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