Hacktivist group Anonymous, through an affiliated Twitter account, has warned the public regarding the security concerns of the popular app TikTok.
@YourAnonCentral has tweeted “Delete TikTok now; if you know someone that is using it explain to them it is essentially malware operated by the Chinese government running a massive spying operation.” Included in the tweet, is a screenshot of a Reddit post that claimed to have reverse-engineered the app. According to the post, TikTok collects these data from its users:
- Phone hardware (including CPU Type, number of course, hardware IDs, screen dimensions, DPI, memory usage, disk space, etc.)
- Other apps installed on the device (including deleted apps)
- Network-related information (such as IP, local IP, router MAC, your MAC, WiFi access point name)
- Whether the device is rooted/jailbroken
- GPS pinging every 30 seconds
- And a local proxy server on your device for transcoding media
Delete TikTok now; if you know someone that is using it explain to them it is essentially malware operated by the Chinese government running a massive spying operation. https://t.co/J7N9FS7PvG
— Anonymous (@YourAnonCentral) July 1, 2020
What had set TikTok to be targetted by Anonymous was the misrepresentation of Anonymous on the app, as there has been a fake account set up. The activist group had immediately cleared this up, saying, “Anonymous has no TikTok account” and that the app is “created as spyware by the Chinese government.
TikTok has not yet commented on the hacktivist group’s allegations, and there are no confirmations yet regarding the Reddit post’s authenticity.
* number of cores.