Could
TikTok Be
Spying
on You?
T
IKTOK HAS YOUR
children’s home
addresses. The Face-
App has your photo
and the ability to pre-
dict what you’ll look
like over the course of
your life. Your hotel check-in app
shows your travel destinations,
room preferences, and upcom-
ing stays. This might not seem
like a big deal, but all of this datacould be allowing other nations
to attack the security of Amer-
icans through geotargeting,
facial recognition, and pattern
projection. A smartphone has
the potential to be a more useful
weapon than a missile.
According to NPR, some
foreign nations, such as Saudi
Arabia, use information shared
across apps to identify dissi-
dents and potential spies or to
hack into computers. Addition-
ally, the data collected through
apps can be used to create
psychographic models—group-
ings of people based on their
shared psychological charac-
teristics—that are deployed in
disinformation campaigns.
Apps like the wildly pop-
ular TikTok are particularly
vulnerable. Owned by a Chinese
company, TikTok utilizes an
algorithm that can be tuned to
distribute news or content that
sways public opinion—a form
of information control that has
proven societal impact. And
China’s 2017 national intelli-
gence law contains language
that requires companies to com-
ply with intelligence gathering
operations if asked.
“China has a very different
legal framework and perspective
on the rule of law,” says Andrea
Little Limbago, chief social sci-
entist at Virtru, an encryption
and privacy company. “TikTok
claims they do not store data
in China, but this is difficult to
validate and does not address
data privacy concerns prior to
February 2019. This is espe-
cially relevant as user data could
inform intelligence campaigns
targeting American citizens.”
(You might remember that in
Febr uar y 2019, TikTok wa sILLUSTRATION BY GRAYHOOD// BY K RISTIN A LIBBY //10
Hoax(?)
28 March/April 2020