Once online, privacy ends. Bottom line.

Let's talk about a couple of things: 1. Yes - most apps like Facebook/ Instagram/ Google, especially if they sell ads, track your activities. Not just TikTok. TikTok however, goes above and beyond and is not only tracking what you do inside the app, but what you do outside of it. There are several studies and whitepapers that show that TikTok is by far much more aggressive when collecting data vs. other social media apps. This is NOT about ads either. It's about content manipulation. Imagine you searched for "marriage counseling" and now TikTok starts showing you videos all about how divorce is great. That has an impact on you. The same goes for depression. Religion. Politics. TikTok should NOT know that you even read up about your local Politician and therefore show you only videos based on their political views. 2. There are loads of security researchers who say that TikTok looks at your facial expressions, and reads your emails, and keystrokes etc. etc. Some have been found to be true, while others are false. I don't deal with "conspiracy theories". So I test what I can and show it. 3. I want to be clear: leave your politics out of it. I don't care about your Republicans vs. Democrats. The world has many countries. The US is just one of them. Yes, it's concerning that the data can be accessed by China. But let's be honest, this isn't anything that any other country can't access with their law enforcement agencies with the right warrants. As always, I show you what I found. Its up to you to make a decision that is right for you. Be nice to each other and respect each other's views even if they are different to yours. We have enough crap in this world - let's be decent humans here.

Facebook does the same, I'm constantly resetting my advertising ID, and find ads relevant to locations where my IP is located (320 Mike's away) and things like articles in the Google feed have related to past searches

Thanks. If TikTok can do this imagine what Apple and Google can, and do on their phones. I don't blame anybody other than Google or Apple or the OS developer for controlling, or not controlling what an app has access to. I don't think TicTok is a security risk. It does show just how much of a security risk your mobile OS is. Notice how nobody is banning or complaining about those.

Something that I learned from Watch Dogs 2 is that "People don't care how it works, just that It does..." People need to start caring.

it all makes sense now! i went to a concert last week and the next day my FYP was filled with videos of that same concert. i loved it though because it is exactly what I want my FYP to show me 😂 but extending this to other pieces of information about our life is... kinda wild.

"The data collected by TikTok is owned by the company, ByteDance, which is based in China. This means that the data is subject to Chinese laws and regulations, including those related to government surveillance and data sharing". Yikes, glad I have never used TikTok!

The question shouldn't be whether TikTok does EXACTLY what they say they do, the question is does TikTok do anything they do not say they do, or worse, anything they explicitly say they do not do. I would love to see a follow-up experiment with basic privacy and security settings properly configured, both in the app and on the phone. TikTok (or any other app) harvesting every bit of data I allow, shame on me; TikTok (or any other app) harvesting even one bit of data I have chosen not to share, shame on them.

You're a genius! Thanks so much for keeping us informed!

Google tracks the locations and listens what we speak. I have got ads for things that I never searched but just after talking about it near the phone

I have never installed TikTok or created a TikTok account.

Sometimes I feek tik tok reads my mind.... what I want to watch pops up. Even when Im talking to my friend about something, that same topic pops up😭

Very interesting video. I just wish you had also shown the best way to go about deleting our TikTok accounts to remove as much data as possible. Would definitely watch more videos like this about other apps that collect data that they really have no business knowing.

I also think our smart devices are 'listening.' Too many 'coincidences.' Thanks for this great info.

Without a doubt the BEST Tech information channel on KZfaq. Thank you once again Liron. Cheers from Australia.

I have had nothing do do with TikTok, as well as Facebook, Instagram, and many others. I'm so glad!

No Tik Tok here, and yet I have the same results from the apps on my phone. I have spoken with people about something and within a few days I will receive news stories and ads related to what we talked about. I have turned off all settings that should allow this, yet it still happens. I wish it was just Tik Tok and China.

VTech had nothing on TikTok … I’d like to hear your take on letting small children use cheap “kiddy cams” from Amazon … I became Grinchesse this past Christmas when I refused to let a 4 year old use one that had an irreversible need to be on Wi-Fi … it was buried in a free game that required their face to be seen thru the selfie mode … I was building PCs on Mom’s dining room table in the 80’s, and I’ve become the original cynic ; aka realist love your work

This is awesome! I never used it but passing it along! So happy to find this channel! Thank you!

Thank you very much for this video Liron :)

Also KZfaq itself - I've had only conversations about certain specific topics (never searched for it online for it , etc.) and not long after those very topics show up on the suggested videos page. Very strange. Who knows who the culprit is - the phone, PC, smart TV, etc.?

Wth that is really creepy, knowing that TikTok always watching what you search

One more thought.., with all the talk regarding a move towards people having a 'social credit score,' and how AI can track what we say, what we write, who we follow, I just see how anything we do can be factored into that score. Be safe.

Perfect timing, ordered new phone today, will pick it up Monday. No TikTok for me. :) Great job!

I don’t have tik tok and get 10 times worse with google

Thanks. Very informative. I think that it would be useful to have more info about how users can improve their privacy online through better management of cookies.

Oh, how ironic. The ad before your video was a TicTok add for me. Anyway, I scrubbed the app from my phone at least a year ago for just these reasons. Thank you for posting.

As far as I'm concerned, you're 'THE MAN' when it comes to advising the public. 👍 Isn't it disgusting what companies do.

Hence why I delete all cookies & never accept them in any websites I visit... But thank you for your time & research 💯

Professor Segev for the win! Great and timely content! You have taught me so many things … eliminated TT a while ago!!!

Hey Liron Segev even though it has nothing do to with the video what do you think about phisical 2fa security keys and can hackers bypass them

I'm wondering if it reads Note documents, since I received a Note document with vacation ideas to look at but I didn't open it up for like two weeks but all of sudden I start seeing vacation packages to these same places. The thing is that I never looked at any travel stuff on my phone, just shopping, the list was just for me to look at and possibly make a suggestion. Weird, right?

Cheers Liron great video. Enjoyed watching the way you conducted testing. Haven't got tik tok on any of my devices. Never will !!!

KZfaq, Facebook others all do the same thing. One time I was talking to a friend at lunch about something I never searched & boom I was getting ads. I now say no to all cookies

Ok here is my update. After watching this video and making a couple of comments, I went to TikTok. First of all, keep in mind that my day sucked. I was not on my phone all day. I got off work early to help out with my dog. I saw my neighbors dog get hit by a car, he lived but I spent most of the day crying. I used my favorite KZfaq channel to go to sleep. I watched what I normally watch on TV and checked into a mind numbing video game. Nothing else. I woke up way too early and watched this video then went to TikTok. I did see videos that I would normally never ever see. Mental well being vids and dating videos. I also saw far more doggy vids than normal and one about Walmart. I don't really believe this was a coincidence either. Now the dating videos came straight from the app eavesdropping on this video of him talking about dating apps. I never talk about them or browse or anything remotely concerning dating. Ever. My day was all about dogs and crying. I made two comments on this video about when I worked at Walmart. It's for real.

Friends don't care but I do. I tried to remove it from my desktop and could NOT find it under Apps. It had neatly buried itself into my system applications where other programs were found. It has become impossible to not be tracked! My Huawei from China takes random photos with my cell phone. I can see it has captured a photo but can't delete it. I think these phones are illegal in the U.S. So when you remove it from the Apps in your phone, does it still linger hidden? ...asking for a friend😉 Thanks for this great video I can share!

Thanks for the deeper insight.

Thanks mate 👍🏾. Great video.

Never watched a tiktok video; never will.

Many thanks!

Tracker control from the fdroid site shows you that most of these companies work together to sell your data and Facebook has its hands in everything.

I don't use the app, but always just assumed this was happening in just about every mainstream app. It's pretty standard. Yay capitalism...

Good information, Liron. Of course, Facebook also has their own 'pixel' that seems to be everywhere and privacy policies to match! Recently I bought a new Samsung phone. Tiktok (and Facebook and ...) was installed by default and don't seem to be uninstallable. But scariest of all is the *HUGE* raft of installed CA root certificates from China and Russia. Do you know if there is any info on how to remove those or to 'untrust' them without breaking the phone?

Good stuff Liron

Thanks for the info. I have not install tiktok all this while due to all those bad press and negative thing i have heard. But now i feel safe to install it. Atleast i know tiktok will only show me what i want to see instead of some random stuff which i am not interested in at all and will only be wasting my time.

Can you exclusively use one separate browser for the things you don't want the advertisers to know? If you couple it with a VPN, that IP address will be shared by many computers. That browser fingerprint (and things you browse with it) would not be associated with your main browser. Is that correct?

Not surprised! I wonder if anyone noticed this also, I was working on CT project at work on computer, directly connected to Wire (not wifi), my phone was on table, not close to PC tho. Then half hour after I got home, winding down, checking things on my smartphone, I was stunned... it finds things related to CT state. Wha?!?!

Few years a go, I was thinking on installing TikTok. So I did. Then I open the app and there was soo many permission requests that they required me to accept. And I was like, disagree on everything and the app closed. So I cleared data and cache then uninstalled it. Hope I did good. Still, I was tempted once...

Thanks great video

👍X100...Thanks for sharing. Love your videos. Keep up the good work.

Is there a way to know which iOS apps are using which APIs? What I am looking for is - is there some sort of program (or app) that can look inside and see which of our apps are calling which APIs?

This is scary.

Just to show how invidious it is, when I mistakenly click on their advert in KZfaq , I find that it has downloaded 2 images. One is a photo and the other is their logo. I have AVG running and security settings set to not allow unknown sources to install.

Great video, if the app gets deleted can it still collect data in the background?

crazy how it violates your privacy and also when you agree to terms in the deep Patton they have access to you mic ,so you can be on tik tok or off the app...phone can be on your pocket ,it has your sounds/voice recording. and can sell the recording to the gov.

I deleted it last week! Isn't google doing the same? Is there any residue, do we need to clean up?

So go through an remove apps off the phone that tracts cookies an data an location??

This causes me to wonder about all other apps and PC progs that have terms and conditions. Almost nobody reads them when installing, and even fewer progs have an opt out feature to the tracking.

Pls discuss if the camera is capturing your image and emotions

Question.....what if you don't have tiktok installed on your phone, but someone sends you a link to watch a video on tiktok. Does tapping on that link now gives tiktok access to look into your phone to see your apps, data etc? Hopeful for some feedback...

What about using TikTok on my Pc throw the browse? Can it track me as well as the app does? For some reason , the Pc version sounds more secure to me .. or would it be better to make a Virtual environment, using Virtualbox or so with Win10 or Android, so that it cannot reach out to vital infos ?

You even not have to search, only talk in about something next to your smartphone, wait 2 to 3 days and you will see.

Does deleting the tik tok app totally remove everything tik tok related? Or do I need to do more?

Be interested to know if the exact same thing happens with an iPhone or not

We presume we're being protected from bad actors by lawmakers, but really? we have to read the terms and conditions? You'd need a legal degree to start with.

Welp that's basically why India banned it and ppl call them boomers LoL.

Who would’ve thought the weather balloons weren’t the worst of our problems

I passed this on to my Daughter and grandkids they needed to hear this info.

Do you have a link to the Gizmodo article?

does this happens on apple too?

It's probably easier to name apps that don't do this it's 2023 man.

I've noticed KZfaq combines topics quickly. I can't recall now, but the strangest content will come up of combined topics.

Thanks for the video.pleace make us a video set tracker on an android phone incase when stollen can ba found when ever the phone is on or off.thank you

Do you have a vdo on how to remove it or just uninstall it?

So is every other app such as FB, SC, IG etc… 👎🏻🤦🏻‍♀️

Mate, do you know of programmatic advertising ? Look into it

Some apps are basically a easy to use interface that in the background it access the webpage so if you using the app you are actually using the website

Do you have to have a TicToc account. Or does it happen if you just look at the videos without an account?

I would appreciate it if you looked into KZfaq Shorts and see if this weird new format is doing the same thing as TikTok.

Do they also track things when you use tiktok on the web browser? Or when you dont have an account?

Liron appreciate ya bro Cayman islands

I’m confused. How is this different from what Facebook does?

I can't believe they would track people

Thank you for this.

My kids don't have TikTok but they do watch a lot of KZfaq shorts. How does that compare for privacy. I know there's no link to China, but are the policies just as bad?

Never was a fan of tiktok. Thank you for the info.

Phones communicate to each other , I used to download social media apps on my android and none on my iOS device but once I downloaded one app and boom , it didn’t require me any passwords , one person can shop from and online store like TEMU and boom the others get the ads on KZfaq, if you worried about cross platform tracking, stop using all Facebook products , Amazon , google and Microsoft which is quite impossible.

You really are the best at what you do! Thank you.

Yes, and so does any Google app, Microsoft app, Apple, etc. Closed source, black box

Great video! I already uninstalled the app from my main device. Thank you!

Thanks for the warning, man. I gotta warn my cousin.

I don't have tiktok but isn't this just how most social media apps and websites work. That's why you get the targeted ads and content you do. I try as much as possible to say no cookies but they still sneak in there, mostly I think from my Google searches.

Does KZfaq do the same thing ?

Am I missing something here, thought it was pretty common knowledge they did this, fb and others do the same, it's even in permissions and terms and conditions.

I agree

This was brilliant!

Isn't it just the same with google and the tube?

Why would you even have the thing on your phone in the first place?

Excellent video thanks 👍

So true, maybe not only tiktok, lots of apps acting like black hole also. Never use tiktok because not essential...