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TikTok App to Stop Accessing User Clipboards After Being Caught in the Act by iOS 14
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Apple must already know all these issues, yet no punishment is apparent on the horizon. This is more than concerning... They either do it behind the scenes or let it slide as long as their image as the "privacy company" remains untarnished.
So it is OK to give non-Chinese companies a free pass for sucking up all the data they can access without our knowledge or consent? I don't want any company doing that. I am well aware of China's undo influence around the world including dictating terms to Hollywood about what can and cannot be in our movies (i.e. Tom Cruise's flight jacket in the upcoming movie "Maverick" had to get rid of the Taiwan patch). I am not saying at all that it is better or OK for China to do any of this, I'm just saying other companies shouldn't be doing it either.
The missing piece in this discussion (going on 9 pages now) about China-based companies vs foreign-based companies is that if a business is located in China, then Chinese law dictates that those companies hand over data to the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP has absolute authority over data, and therefore your personal data. And so naturally, there will not be a 1:1 parity in criticism.
Just because they are disabling it for iOS 14 does not mean that they can continue it for iOS 13 users. It is easy to detect the iOS version (for compatibility reasons when a new feature is introduced), so iOS 13 users could still be at risk
Grabbing that data while someone types is a great way to capture a less "filtered" version of a person's intent. I have typed responses before here on MacRumors then decided to tone down my comments (self filtering) before posting my reply. I never have and never will use TikTok but if they are grabbing data as you type, they could get a less filtered version of what some people really think or want to say.
I'm not going to keep the list up to date. There's a pretty good list on Reddit being kept up to date, I don't have it linked though.
I don't like Tik Tok, nor do I like the CCP, but it's ridiculous to single-out one app like this when it's pretty much an industry-wide issue.
The level of accountability is still different. Though I'm not sure how much different.
...and? The NSA is a US government intelligence agency. No surprise there. On the other hand, TikTok is a private business- one that happens to be based in China, and whose parent company is ByteDance, which is also based in China. TikTok and ByteDance are subject to China's laws, and those laws say that the Chinese Communist Party has authority over their data.
Yeah no thanks.
Most people here value Apple because, as far as we know, our data stays with Apple. It isn't passed off to the US government. And if the government or law enforcement does come looking for data, Apple can (and does) tell them to go pound sand. Apple even puts up road blocks and throws away the key the best it can, to make it as hard as possible for others to get our data.
The NSA is extremely likely to be collecting the same data...they might be using The Weather Channel to do so. That was NT1440's point. It's nice of you to think that A) you'd be notified about a deeper level NSA inquiry and B) "apple would tell them to go pound sand"
The NSA is extremely likely to be collecting the same data...they might be using The Weather Channel to do so. That was NT1440's point. It's nice of you to think that A) you'd be notified about a deeper level NSA inquiry and B) "apple would tell them to go pound sand"
Sure, I suppose it's wishful thinking that companies aren't working in league with the US government. But, at the end of the day, I do trust my own government more than the CCP, and that ain't going to change.
Why? Nothing was ever changed after the Snowden revelations, and American tech companies literally build the surveillance systems for dictators around the world.
Middle East Dictators Buy Spy Tech From Company Linked to IBM and Google
Documents reveal the controversial surveillance devices Chinese company Semptian is providing to authoritarian governments.
theintercept.com
We agree, but how much this trust is deserved really depends on the accountability and may change over time.
White, Non White, Person of color.... When people stop calling other people by their skin color things will get better.
I think we agree on these points completely. There are certainly both factors at play: more or less explicit xenophobia and even racism and structural problems. The exact relative contributions of those are unknown. I am sorry for having implicitly accused you of striking a moralistic tone, it was more a general note about the current discourse, which seems very focused on guilt and blame. I think other posters in this thread match this description much more than you.
Let me stress that I am not attempting to justify any of this. I love solving problems and I firmly believe that in order to solve a problem, we first have to understand the problem and the system it is part of. And we have to be as honest and objective as possible doing that. Currently, there is of course a lot of understandable anger driving the discussion. We also have to recognize that these impulses are very unlikely to solve problems on this scale. The problems involved here couldn't be more complex and I do not think it's advisable to look at this web of issues, point to one and tear it out. Rather, we should understand first how this issue is connected to other issues. There might not be a justification for this problem, but there certainly is a rationalization of it. And in the end, I believe all humans are equal and all act according to common interests. Of course, ultimately, everyone is responsible, but anybody who ever delegated tasks knows, that responsibility isn't easily divided among many. To the contrary, I believe making everyone responsible will just lead to nobody feeling individually responsible and encourages hollow virtue signals. We can't micromanage everyone's actions, thoughts and words (and we probably shouldn't), but we can change some of the rules of the game. The question then isn't how to get individuals to make specific decisions, but rather why groups behave with certain tendencies and what influences on this behavior we can actually effectively control via policy. If we do that, I sense that we can find less elusive problems that we can efficiently tackle or at least more efficiently than how people think about each other. This may be a slow process in a time when most of us ache for disruptive action, but I think that is the only viable path forward. I don't see a practical alternative. Just calling out collective behavior and demanding change won't do anything. Just how neurons in a brain are unaware of the thoughts they are part of, humans are often unaware of the systemic issues they contribute to and how. The neurons just react to their immediate surroundings just like a human just wants the best life for them and their family. I think we can't change those priorities, but we can change the system that puts those priorities in dissonance with the interests of others.
Thank you for this recommendation!
At least some of these companies put info in their terms but no one reads.
Dunkin for instance, says they will track your location even when not using the app.