How TikTok is using your data and how to stop it
Data Privacy Week highlighted the impact technology has on our privacy rights and how important it is to protect our data
Although recent security breaches have raised concerns, a lot of people do not know how their data is being used, myself included. The Fundamental Rights Survey shows that 41% do not want to share any personal data with private companies, yet there are 227.81 million users of TikTok, the popular short-form video app, in Europe. The problem is that TikTok is known for gathering a lot of users’ data and has been widely criticized for its handling of user data.
The app, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has been accused of collecting and sharing users’ personal data. TikTok uses a wide range of data, including users’ location, browsing history, and device information. This allows the app to personalize the users’ content in order to give each user a unique and enjoyable experience. But what is the price to pay for engaging personalized content?
TikTok gathers data from multiple points. Before even signing up the app has access to your cookies. Once you have created your account your activity is measured to analyze your preferences based on the videos you watch. But that’s not all, your location, IP address, search history, age range, gender, and the content of your messages are also stored.
Although TikTok’s privacy policy is very clear on its data collection and tracking, it is less clear on where the data is going. Is it only used for advertisers?
When in use, the TikTok app gathers more information than it needs to in order to run successfully. This is why TikTok has been criticized for data harvesting and its data-sharing practices. The app has been found to share user data with third-party companies, including those based in China. This has raised concerns about the security of users’ personal information and its potential for use for nefarious purposes.
In response to these concerns, various countries have banned the app or are planning to do so, and some have called for stricter regulations on handling user data by companies like TikTok.
If you want to protect your data, you can change a few privacy settings to stop some data from being collected. These simple actions can lower the personalized experience TikTok was built for — but that could be a price worth paying in the longer run:
· Set your account as private;
· Unlink your account with other social media platforms;
· Request access to your collected data;
· Delete your browser cookies;
· Change your permissions in the privacy settings of your app;
· Update your privacy settings as updates can change your permissions.
Of course, TikTok will still be able to have access to a lot of your data. However, the best thing you can do to protect your data is first to know your rights. For example, in Europe, the GDPR law gives the “Right of access by the data subject”, which means you can request access to any company’s data on you (https://gdpr-info.eu/art-15-gdpr/). Then, review your privacy preferences and inform yourself of how your data is being used. Finally, another very easy action that has big importance is to update your devices, as usually a lot of your devices’ updates concern protection.
However, the best way to ensure your data is not being collected and used unethically is to delete the apps you don’t trust!
What do you do to protect your data? Share your tips below to help the community stay safe!
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminating the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.
