The TikTok entertainment app has been in the limelight for weeks now. Beyond its growing popularity - the app has exceeded 2 billion downloads - TikTok is accused by Donald Trump of being a spy tool in the pay of the Chinese government. President Trump claims that the app collects private data about its American users, which is why he signed an executive order to ban TikTok in the United States.
Charges refuted by TikTok who claimed to be perfectly innocent. The CIA also said there was no concrete evidence to point to TikTok at fault. The application would therefore have nothing to be ashamed of? Not quite.
Bypass Google policies
The Wall Street Journalhas just revealed that the application was tracking Android users without their consent and without the possibility of remedying it until very recently. According to the investigation of the American media, TikTok lent itself to this practice until last November.
The method TikTok used to track its users was to read the MAC (Media Access Control) address of the devices that had the app installed. This address, made up of a series of numbers and letters, is specific to each device. It therefore makes it easy to identify a device, blessed bread for advertising tracking. Especially since an average user will not be able to easily check if his MAC address is tracked and even less modify it.
According to the Wall Street Journal , TikTok would have reached the privacy of its users, but also the policy of Google on this subject. Like Apple on iOS, Google has put in place protection measures on Android to prevent applications from accessing the MAC address of devices and therefore tracking their users. A policy which would not have stopped TikTok and which would have followed its Android users thanks to their MAC address.
Revelations that fall badly for the application which ensures to be flawless, despite accusations of espionage from the United States. A spokesperson for TikTok has also responded to the accusations of the Wall Street Journal by defending "the commitment [of the company] to protect the privacy and security of the TikTok community", before specifying that the current version application did not collect users' MAC addresses. The Wall Street Journal however assures that the method used by TikTok to circumvent Google's policies can still be used from the app today. Beyond this sensitive data, the social network does not seem to collect a significant amount of data on its users, specifies the American media.
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