Social media sites track your every move and collect massive amounts of personal data on millions of unwilling users, but some collect more information than others.
And a report by the newspaper “Dailymail” stated that a study conducted by the “Internet 2.0” company for cybersecurity considered “TikTok” the largest tool for data collection, as it collects more data than any social media application or other messaging services. .
The popular video-sharing app owned by Chinese company ByteDance has around 1 billion active users worldwide, but it has more than twice as many trackers in its source code as the average other app.
TikTok's tracking software collects data about users to adjust the algorithm that runs the application interface, but it can also collect information about the Wi-Fi network and SIM card, which raises concerns about how these devices are used. data.
But the company is not alone in this. Microsoft's two famous products, "Teams" and "Outlook", in addition to Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat, ranked first in the first eight positions among the 22 major companies that absorb the largest amount of From the data, Facebook was ranked as one of the best companies, ranking 16th in the "Internet 2.0" evaluation.
Internet 2.0 gave each app a score based on the amount of personal information collected, with TikTok scoring a total of 63.1.
The "Facebook" application scored one of the lowest scores in the "Internet 2.0" assessment (Getty Images)
And it ranked second in the list of communication sites that collect the most information about users, “VK”, the largest Internet company in Russia, and its applications were removed from the Apple Store, amid security concerns, and it got a rating of 62.7, with 13 tools detected. Track has 28 "dangerous permissions" in its source code.
As for the third most used application in tracking users, it is "Viber Messenger", which has more than a billion users, as it appeared that it had 11 tracking tools.
Microsoft Teams, which is famous for its group work calls, had 4 trackers but a large number of permission requests, which gives it a score of 38 and puts it in fourth place.
As for the Outlook email service - which has an estimated 400 million users worldwide - it ranked fifth with a score of 35.9 and 7 followers, followed by Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and LinkedIn, all of which scored about 34. higher than the average of 28.8.
Google's "Gmail" email scored 29.6, while "WeChat" was found to contain 5 tracking tools.
The Facebook app scored one of the lowest because of "very few code warnings" despite having a large number of permission requests.
The messaging service Signal - favored by the British Army over its rival WhatsApp for organizing daily events - was one of the best apps, with Facebook Messenger and Discord also scoring highly.
The study's findings come amid a security row over how information collected by social media companies is used.
The TikTok platform considers the "Internet 2.0" report misleading and believes that it collects less information than others (European News Agency)
David Robinson, a former Australian Army intelligence officer and co-founder of Internet 2.0, said the company had "long-term privacy and security concerns" about TikTok.
Alan Woodward, professor of cybersecurity at the University of Surrey, said: “TikTok collects information, and you have to wonder why, other than creating a complete profile on a person, the type of data is so broad, that it is hard not to conclude that it is being used for more than just marketing and creating some kind of Marketing profiles, and that's - I think - a concern, especially in the current geopolitical environment, where China is establishing itself as a quite assertive state player."
The TikTok platform said, "The new report is based on the same misleading analyzes of" Internet 2.0 "that were conducted last year, and recent reports and studies contradict its conclusions."
"TikTok is not unique in the amount of information it collects, and in fact it collects less data than many popular mobile apps," she emphasized.