Security News > 2021 > March > Security Analysis Clears TikTok of Censorship, Privacy Accusations

Nebulous privacy and censorship criticisms about video social-media app TikTok have been swirling for months.

Security analysts from CitizenLab are the first to collect real data on the platform's source code, and reported that TikTok meets reasonable standards of security and privacy.

CitizenLab explained that the controls ByteDance has put in place for the version of TikTok available in the U.S. are sufficient, "Nor [contain] strong deviations of privacy, security and censorship practices when compared to TikTok's competitors, like Facebook," the report said.

Last summer, former President Trump threatened to ban TikTok from the U.S., where it has more than 100 million users, and even signed an executive order to block it from app stores due to what he called "National-security concerns." Then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross added at the time that TikTok allowed "China's malicious collection of American citizens' personal data." Plans to block TikTok were abandoned at the last minute, but questions have lingered.

The Trill version of TikTok is used in East and Southeast Asia and provides tighter privacy and access controls than the Musically version of TikTok, which is available in the West.

Proposed bans on TikTok and WeChat were met with skepticism by some in the security community when early accusations of TikTok abuse emerged, because no evidence ever materialized.

News URL

https://threatpost.com/security-analysis-tiktok-censorship-privacy/164990/