TikTok App to Stop Accessing User Clipboards After Being Caught in the Act by iOS 14

[SgtPepper12]

Civilization is a very thin veneer and bubbling away underneath is xenophobic tendencies that can easily metastasize when times are bad. Three-quarters of whites in the US don't have any non-white friends. Just think about that.

That doesn't really mean that 75% of all Americans made the conscious decision not to be friends with non-whites. The distribution of ethnical groups in the US isn't perfectly random, it's highly locally correlated, they cluster. 63% of the US are whites, but if you go for a walk in your neighborhood as a white person and see 100 people, way more than 63 of them will be white on average. The same applies for any other ethnic group in the States. While that surely is historically based in xenophobia, I think it's unfair and quite frankly more damaging than helpful to claim that every person that has no non-white friends is a xenophobe.

 

[GadgetBen]

Confusion?

We’re not stupid TikTok, we know that you’re data mining.

Aren’t TikTok partly owned by a Chinese investment company as well?

I think this warrants further investigation.

 

[Puppuccino]

It’s funny how every company in the world ‘cares about your privacy’ until they’re found to be violating it in the public news.

I mean TikTok of all things is Chinese spyware anyway, but a lot of other apps have been doing this copying of clipboard business too.

 

[BvizioN]

Aww... TikTok! Caught with their pants down by iOS 14.

 

[DCIFRTHS]

Developer here, we need access cause things like copy paste can mean anything. Your clipboard might be a file, picture or video. Not just simple text. So we have to program how to accept those formats. It’s probably why apple now added the banner aboutthe clipboard. Also to note, there are two types of clipboards. A global one and app specific one. App specific one allows things like erasing after pasting. Kind of like one password.

Are you saying that when a password, or any other field within 1Password, is copied by the USER to the clipboard from within 1Password on iOS, that the password is not available to other apps that can read the clipboard? Hope I explained that properly...

If yes, is there a way an end user can verify this?

 

[123]

One question I have is why do apps have access to the clipboard AT ALL?

One answer: Usability.

For example, Apollo (the reddit reader) detects when there's a reddit URL in the clipboard and then asks whether you want to open that post.

One of our apps has a feature that is specifically designed for continuois fast-searching in the product catalog from recipes or other text containing food items. The user needs to enter this mode, then have a recipe open (best side-by-side), select an ingredient, switch to our app, then results will immediately be shown and the user can instantly add items to their shopping cart.

You can always work around such things in more cumbersome ways, but I don't see why it shouldn't be possible if the user consents.

 

[notrack]

View attachment 927830

Expectedly, Google Maps does it too.

It's Google, what did you expect? They spy on everything they can get away with, it's in their DNA.

 

[martin2345uk]

I don’t understand why it says “TikTok pasted from instagram” - what does that mean? As opposed to “TikTok accessed the clipboard”?

 

[gleepskip]

Civilization is a very thin veneer and bubbling away underneath is xenophobic tendencies that can easily metastasize when times are bad. Three-quarters of whites in the US don't have any non-white friends. Just think about that.

The Adjective Police won't point their fingers and call this post racism. Just think about that.

 

[[AUT] Thomas]

TikTok being TikTok... no surprise...

TikTok is committed to protecting users' privacy and being transparent about how our app works.

Yeah sure... like tobacco companies care about the health of their customers...
The level of BS we reached here is astonishing...

before everyone dog piles on TikTok and the "Chinese" apps... there are several other offenders

Sry... but... that's whataboutism at its finest...
But, yes, all those apps should be listed on a public wall of shame witht responsible company delivering a statement incl. justification.

 

[manu chao]

I think apps are more likely requesting to paste from clipboard every time you use it, rather than it has access to clipboard all the time.

Would I be right in saying that disabling Background App Refresh stops an app from accessing the clipboard unless it is actually in the foreground?

 

[kimmen]

We have already submitted an updated version of the app to the App Store removing the anti-spam feature to eliminate any potential confusion

Don't worry Tik-Tok, I was enlightened rather than confused

 

[gnasher729]

and yet they allow a “sandboxed” app to completely monitor activity in some other app.

Please explain how this is working.

They also default to allowing all apps run in the background. And even if you turn off “Run in background” completely, apps continue to run in the background until some other app needs that memory. This alert appears even if you’ve disallowed TikTok from running in the background!

Please explain how this affects your privacy.

 

[Populus]

He should call his account guinea.pig instead of cat.squirrel. It's a beta?!

But then its a feature since 2016 or earlier...

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/4nl861

Thank you for posting this, I will provide feedback to Apple suggesting to make a toggle to selectively remove access to clipboard as soon as I can. The more people do this, the better. C’mon Reddit, c’mon MacRumors!

 

[lysingur]

While that surely is historically based in xenophobia, I think it's unfair and quite frankly more damaging than helpful to claim that every person that has no non-white friends is a xenophobe.

I'm not suggesting that at all. I'm suggesting that it's very easy for xenophobia to ooze onto the surface when all your friends are from one single ethnic group. 75% is an astonishing percentage in a country that claims to be the "melting pot". There are fewer minorities in Britain (where 81.9% of the population are whites) but over there only 33% of the whites don't have any non-white friends. In the US, you pretty much have to make a conscious effort not to have any non-white friends if you're middle class, don't work from home and live in an urban area on either coast. It's 75% in pretty much the most diverse country humanity has ever known.

 

[gnasher729]

To all the racists here, let me blow your minds:

MOST of the software you use are written by Chinese and Indian developers.

How do I know? Walk down facebook HQ, I've visited the campuses. It's masses of yellow and brown faces. Yet in all the media reveals like WWDC and FB, it's all white. Hmm interesting.

I work in IT, and 60% of the devs are Indian and the rest are Chinese, powered by 4-5 white managers.

Please tell us where you work.

 

[lysingur]

The Adjective Police won't point their fingers and call this post racism. Just think about that.

Having xenophobic tendencies isn't exactly the same as being racist. Just think about it.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

So, Copy/Paste makes you likely to be a spammer? It makes some sense, but just how is that enforced? It's certainly possible to block Paste in a form field (I encounter that with some password and 2FA fields). Is TikTok trying to be less heavy handed - allowing some Paste, but not too much Paste? (I don't use TikTok, so I wouldn't know)

 

[lysingur]

Great features. I don't use such sneaky apps - I guess... I hope... - but I do copy/paste a lot of my passwords from 1Password... I may have to find another way till iOS 14 T_T

1Password has a security feature that automatically removes passwords from the clipboard. I hope this puts your mind a little bit at ease.

 

[EchomanX]

TikTok should be removed together with all CCP linked apps that are stealing information from all over the world.

 

[lysingur]

TikTok should be removed together with all CCP linked apps that are stealing information from all over the world.

As opposed to Facebook and Google which don't do that at all?

 

[LV426]

and yet they allow a “sandboxed” app to completely monitor activity in some other app. They also default to allowing all apps run in the background. And even if you turn off “Run in background” completely, apps continue to run in the background until some other app needs that memory. This alert appears even if you’ve disallowed TikTok from running in the background!

That’s some good privacy.

Except that copying to the clipboard is to a realm outside the "other" app. The clipboard is a global resource.

I'm not saying it's right, and I would like the whole process hardened, but that's the way it is and has been for many years.

Let's say you write down a password in Notes, and copy it to the clipboard so that you can paste it into a login screen somewhere. Once you've put it in the clipboard, other apps can see it. So, be careful about use of the clipboard.

 

[Abazigal]

To all the racists here, let me blow your minds:

MOST of the software you use are written by Chinese and Indian developers.

How do I know? Walk down facebook HQ, I've visited the campuses. It's masses of yellow and brown faces. Yet in all the media reveals like WWDC and FB, it's all white. Hmm interesting.

I work in IT, and 60% of the devs are Indian and the rest are Chinese, powered by 4-5 white managers.

It’s one thing to have software written by a Chinese programmer working for a US company (and which shares their values), and it’s another to have a Chinese-run company who by its very business model has unfettered access to the biometric data, location data and social data of an entire generation of young Americans.

Because if China ever wants a hold of that data, Tiktok has to hand it over.

I don’t think it’s racist to be legitimately concerned about the implications of this. Social media companies need to be regulated because of the harm they can (and arguably have) caused, and Tiktok doubly so because of who their boss is.

 

[Ironman226]

Does macOS 11 also push a local notification when an app is copying a data from the clipboard?

 

[adamw]

TikTok got caught with their hands in the cookie jar...