Thanks To IOS 14 Beta, TikTok Was Caught Snooping On IPhone User Activity
JAKARTA - A number of iPhone users are testing Apple's latest operating system, iOS 14. Although it is still in the trial or beta stage, iOS has managed to spot a number of applications that are trying to snoop on iPhone user activity.
As quoted by the New York Post, Monday, June 29, this case was first discovered by the head of Emojipedia's online emoji directory, Jeremy Burge, who was confused by the TikTok application accessing the clipboard from his device. This incident was also shared via his personal Twitter account.
iOS 14 beta has a banner to confirm when you paste from another device (eg copy on a Mac and paste on iPhone) Seems to be bugging out and showing with every keystroke in TikTok pic.twitter.com/aFKNfZnpyb
- Jeremy Burge (@jeremyburge) June 24, 2020
Apple itself, has indeed tightened its user privacy protection system through the iOS 14 update. As a result, the privacy warning banner on iOS 14 will continue to appear when users run applications that are considered spying or peeking at the iPhone clipboard.
Responding to this incident, TikTok ensured that the application did not collect data or snoop on the user's clipboard activity as experienced by iOS users recently. TikTok says the problem is due to its app identifying spam or repetitive behavior.
"We have sent an updated version of our app to the App Store to remove anti-spam features so as not to confuse users. TikTok is committed to protecting user privacy and being transparent about how our app works," said a TikTok spokesperson.
There are 50 Other ApplicationsApart from TikTok, there are 50 other apps known to try to access or peek at clipboard data on iOS. Some of them include the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Fox News news applications, as well as games both Fruit Ninja and PUBG Mobile.
"This is very, very dangerous. This application reads the clipboard, and there is no reason to do this. Applications that do not have a text field to enter text have no reason to read clipboard text," researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk said, as quoted. from Ubergizmo.