TikTok is denounced for collecting user information and sending it to China

United States vs. China. A new chapter in this long confrontation involving two colossi of the world economy, the United States and China, and in which, once again, the mobile world is the protagonist. Although now it is not Huawei's turn, but the Tik Tok short video application. According to a national security investigation carried out in Washington, Tik Tok, a short video application from China, is collecting private data from US users and, without their permission, sending them to their country of origin.The application also faces other accusations of censorship and manipulation.

Tik Tok is involved in a spying scandal

It was last week when the dark clouds began to hang over the Tik Tok app. A class action lawsuit from California accused Tik Tok, and specifically the developer of the successful application, ByteDance, of collecting personal data from users without consent and sending it to China. In the same lawsuit, it was also made explicit that the application hosted Chinese surveillance software that filtered the data to servers and then shared it with other companies such as Alibaba or Tencent. Remind readers that Aliexpress is owned by the Alibaba group and Tencent owns and mistress of such famous games as 'Fortnite' or 'LOL' that are played by millions of people around the world.

What prompted the lawsuit and the ensuing national security investigation in Washington? the starting gun was fired by a user of the app in New Jersey who uploaded a video denouncing the violation of human rights in Xinjiang The video went viral and was removed from the app. Later, Tik Tok claimed that the removal of the video was in error. In addition, ByteDance ensures that it does store the data of American users but that it does not send it back to Chinese servers and that it does not censor content in any way. In recent times it is rumored that ByteDance itself is carrying out maneuvers to distance its Tik Tok brand from China and thus stop being involved in controversies about espionage and national security.

It is not the first time that Tik Tok has been accused of leaking data

The suspicions of espionage by ByteDance and its Tik Tok application are not new. The year 2019 opened with a piece of news that put the application in check. According to an investigation carried out by security expert Claudia Biancotti, these types of social applications could cause serious security problems and are "easily accessible" by the Chinese government. The personal data of the users of said applications, among which Tik Tok would be found, can be collected by high government spheres.

The Chinese government has developed a surveillance system called 'Skynet' (yes, like the one in the movie 'Terminator') that has millions of cameras with artificial intelligence, spread across the country, to record to its citizens. Thanks to the data they collected through these applications, they could have their names, surnames, as well as the faces extracted from their profile picture and uploaded videos, in this way they could control them in a very simple way through through facial recognition

The great concern of the security expert is that, apparently, Tik Tok is very famous among the US military who upload videos of her training. Videos recorded inside military installations and many of them are also geolocated, with the danger that this poses to the national security of the US.