Tag Archives: Social networking

TikTok Caught Spying What We Type In Other Apps!

TikTok : What Is It?

TikTok is a Chinese social networking service built around short video clips. Developed and owned by ByteDance which is based in Beijing, it is very popular amongst young people and even children.

This has led to numerous controversies as TikTok proved slow or reluctant to remove dangerous or racist videos :

TikTok Caught Spying What We Type In Other Apps… TWICE!

Beyond their obvious desire to grow their service at the expense of the danger to real people, there have been cybersecurity and privacy concerns about TikTok.

In a space of just four months, TikTok has been caught spying on what we type in OTHER APPS… not once, but TWICE. Take a look at this video expose…

TikTok Caught Spying On What We Type : First Time

Let’s start in March 2020, when Talal Has Bakry and Tommy Mysk exposed how they found that TikTok was spying on what we typed in other apps through the pasteboard / clipboard.

In the video above, you can see how TikTok immediately asked to read all text stored in the pasteboard, whenever it is launched.

The pasteboard contains everything you copied earlier – messages from other people, quotes from an article, or far more sensitive stuff like your password or account number.

And because of Apple’s universal clipboard feature, this means everything you copy on your Mac or iPad will be available on your iPhone, and therefore TikTok.

To be clear, TikTok was just one of the many apps that they found to be spying on what we type. Here were the apps they confirmed were spying on the pasteboard / clipboard.

News	Games	Social	Other
ABC News Al Jazeera English CBS News CNBC Fox News News Break New York Times NPR itv Nachrichten Reuters Russia Today Stern Nachrichten The Economist The Huffington Post The Wall Street Journal VICE News	8 Ball Pool AMAZE!!! Bejeweled Block Puzzle Classic Bejeweled Classic Bejeweled HD Flip The Gun Fruit Ninja Golfmasters Letter Soup Love Nikki My Emma Plants vs. Zombies Heroes Pooking – Billiards City PUBG Mobile Tomb of the Mask Tomb of the Mask: Color Total Party Kill Watermarbling	TikTok ToTalk Tok Truecaller Viber Weibo Zoosk	10% Happier: Meditation 5-0 Radio Police Scanner Accuweather AliExpress Shopping Bed Bath & Beyond Dazn Hotels.com Hotel Tonight Overstock Pigment – Adult Coloring Book Recolor Coloring Book to Color Sky Ticket The Weather Network

At that time, TikTok told Zak Doffman that it was Google Ads that was snooping into the pasteboard / clipboard.

“The clipboard access issues showed up due to third-party SDKs, in our case an older version Google Ads SDK. We are in the processes of updating so that the third-party SDK will no longer have access.“

They claimed it was because TikTok was using an older Google Ads SDK, which they have since replaced with a newer version.

TikTok Caught Spying On What We Type : Second Time

BFast forward to June, and the release of iOS 14 beta. The new clipboard warning feature in iOS 14 appears to have caught TikTok spying on the pasteboard / clipboard once again.

In the dramatic video shared by Jeremy Burge – the 1:35 point in our video above – he shows TikTok grabbing the contents of his iPhone’s clipboard every 1-3 keystrokes, as he typed in Instagram!

Okay so TikTok is grabbing the contents of my clipboard every 1-3 keystrokes. iOS 14 is snitching on it with the new paste notification
— Jeremy Burge (@jeremyburge) June 24, 2020

Okay so TikTok is grabbing the contents of my clipboard every 1-3 keystrokes. iOS 14 is snitching on it with the new paste notification pic.twitter.com/OSXP43t5SZ

— Jeremy Burge (@jeremyburge) June 24, 2020

This is even more egregious than the first time they spied on the pasteboard / clipboard! Instead of just looking at what you copied into the clipboard earlier, TikTok is literally reading what you are typing in a different app!

TikTok claimed that this issue was “triggered by a feature designed to identify repetitive, spammy behaviour“, and that they have already submitted an updated app without this “anti-spam feature“.

TikTok Caught Spying : What Should YOU Do?

If you are not a frequent TikTok user, the answer is simple – UNINSTALL TikTok.

If you really like TikTok, you should immediately update to the latest version, which ByteDance claims will no longer read your clipboard because it has both an updated Google Ads SDK, as well as their anti-spam feature removed.

Either way, if you are concerned about privacy issues with TikTok, you should write to privacy@tiktok.com and express your deep concerns about not letting them read what you are typing, whether it is in their app or other apps.

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Facebook Introduces New Multi-Colour Brand Logo!

The New Facebook Multi-Colour Brand Logo

The new Facebook multi-colour brand logo was designed with custom typography and capitalisation to create a visual distinction between Facebook the company, and Facebook the app.

Facebook really spent A LOT of time, money and effort to design that new multi-colour brand logo.

Conducting listening tours with their employees as well as people and businesses using their products
Bringing together people from across Facebook to design and work together on that logo
Refining the design with designers across Facebook to ensure it works in product, hardware, marketing and physical phases

Facebook is spending so much time, money and effort on the rebranding effort, because they want the new brand logo to convey three clear messages :

Clarity : Facebook is a brand that simplifies and builds understanding
Empathy : Facebook is a system that is respectful of context and environment
Creating Space : Facebook supports people and their stories

It is easy to read between the lines, to see how criticism over their refusal to tackle fake news, or even promising not to accept misleading or political ads is a factor.

However, we seriously doubt a rebrand will change anyone’s minds about how Facebook is facilitating the spread of fake news and misleading political ads.

The New Facebook Logo In Instagram + WhatsApp

Facebook will be using the new logo to rebrand their other services – Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, etc. Beginning in June 2020, they will include “from Facebook” to all of those services and apps.

This is what Instagram will look like eventually :

And this is what WhatsApp will look like :

And they will start using the new brand logo in their products and marketing materials, including a new company website.

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Kaspersky : Cyberbullying Affect Child Health & Socialization

Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is intentional intimidation, persecution or abuse that children and teenagers may encounter on the internet. Interestingly, children aged 8-16 are more wary of this threat than their parents are. According to the study, 13% of children and 21% of parents consider it harmless. At the same time, 16% of the children surveyed are more afraid of being bullied online than offline, while half (50%) are equally afraid of both real-life and virtual bullying.

Parents should not downplay the dangers of cyberbullying. Despite the fact that the study found only 4% of children admitted to being bullied online (compared to 12% in real life), in 7 out of 10 cases the consequences were traumatic.

Bullying on the Internet seriously affected their emotional well-being: parents of 37% of the victims reported lower self-esteem, 30% saw a deterioration in their performance at school, and 28% cited depression. In addition, 25% of parents stated that cyberbullying had disrupted their child’s sleep patterns and caused nightmares (21%). Another 26% of parents noticed that their child had started avoiding contact with other children, and 20% discovered their child had anorexia.

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Just as worrying are the statistics showing that 20% of children witnessed others being bullied online, and in 7% of cases even participated in it. The survey shows that children often hide incidents of cyberbullying from their parents, making the task of protecting them even more complicated, though, fortunately, not impossible.

Andrei Mochola, Head of Consumer Business at Kaspersky Lab, comments: “In an effort to protect our children from danger, we mustn’t forget that they not only live in the real world but also in the virtual world, which is just as real to them. On the Internet, children socialize, learn new things, have fun and, unfortunately, encounter unpleasant situations. Cyberbullying is one of the most dangerous things that can confront a child on the Internet, because it can have a negative impact on their psyche and cause problems for the rest of their lives. The best solution in this case is to talk to your child and to use parental control software that can alert you to any suspicious changes to their social network page.”

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