Friday, July 3, 2020

Anonymous urges the public to delete TikTok

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.

Anonymous has no Tik Tok account; that is an App created as spyware by the Chinese government. Just how Facebook / Instagram work as spyware for the U.S. government. Bad actors will use our image and name to try and discredit us through unethical actions. https://t.co/TtGh9w2tpO

— Anonymous (@YourAnonCentral) June 6, 2020