By Doug Kelly
A recent study found that TikTok, owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, allows more third-party trackers to collect your data than any other social media app – but no one really knows where that data goes or how it is used. The study, by URL Genius, uncovered that more than 90 percent (13/14) of the network contacts on the app were from third parties.
Generally, first-party trackers are used for internal company purposes, like analytics or ads. But with third-party trackers, it is essentially impossible to know who is tracking your data, what information they are collecting, and where they are sending that data. In fact, third-party trackers can track your activity on other sites even after you leave the app, and the study found third-party tracking still happened even when users did not opt into allowing tracking in their settings.
TikTok’s mysterious third-party trackers present an enormous security risk. A new CNBC article said, “the company has been the subject of criticism in the past over how the company collects and uses data, especially from younger users, including claims that the company has transferred some private user data to Chinese servers. As CNBC noted last year, TikTok’s privacy policy states that the app can share user data with its Chinese parent company, though it claims to employ security measures to ‘safeguard sensitive user data.’”
It bears consideration among executive and/or legislative leaders whether scrutiny is merited concerning TikTok possibly sharing American user information with China’s government through its parent company. If so, it would fit China’s well-established pattern, deploying a “whole of society” approach to eroding the U.S.’s technological edge.
For example, government-sponsored hackers in China have engaged in a prolonged hacking campaign to build a massive database on American citizens for intelligence and counter-intelligence purposes. They have stolen information from the U.S. government, health insurers, airlines, hotel chains, and more, allowing China’s intelligence services to gain access to an incredibly rich database on the behaviors, preferences, and vulnerabilities of hundreds of millions of Americans. China has already weaponized this same type of database for attacks on its own people.
While the United States is engaged in a high stakes competition with China, Congress is considering misguided legislation that would subject American companies to rules that do not apply to Chinese companies. This would essentially give Chinese technology companies free reign for expansion, emboldening companies like TikTok while stifling U.S. technology companies’ ability to compete.
If China can collect even more behavioral data on Americans through a popular app, then it can achieve its stated goal of being the world’s leading power by 2035 even faster. Instead of targeting America’s most innovative technology companies with punitive legislation, Congress needs to first make sure that a popular app owned by a Chinese tech giant is not secretly sharing petabytes of behavioral data on Americans with the Chinese Communist Party.