News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed from app stores. Parent comment

Re:FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be r... by janekm on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @03:34AM (#32148574)
Personally I feel this is as much a failing of of mobile OSs as anything else. As long as we have an environment where ad networks think it's desirable to collect this kind of information it's going to get collected, whether by TikTok or ad networks. Apple at least attempt to limit what data is accessible by apps, Google is less incentivized to do so.

It's not much help to "ban TikTok" while the ad networks run wild. If we're going to be worried about China I doubt it'd be too much trouble for them to place a few engineers into ad networks and exfiltrate the data from there.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be r... by Ekaros on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @04:01AM (#32148751)
Maybe the governments should force mobile OS to provide absolute zero information about anything to apps. If the apps can't get anything they can't leak anything.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be r... by yreg on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @08:29AM (#32150543)
As a user I want to have the app as isolated as possible and have the ability to grant it any system permissions I want. Perhaps combined with a store rule that an app isn't allowed to block unrelated functionality when it doesn't get the permissions it wants.

iOS has been quite good to me in this regard, although it still needs improvements (e.g. add a permission for accessing internet).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be r... by iggldiggl on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @07:21AM (#32150013)
Unfortunately that approach pretty easily ends up in a territory where you can't do anything interesting with your phone, either, because it's all too dangerous.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be r... by kaba0 on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @07:31AM (#32150093)
Then your phone will be a quite useless device.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be r... by hulitu on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @05:49AM (#32149427)
The governments are the direct beneficiaries of this data collection either directly or indirectly.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be r... by gzer0 on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @06:06AM (#32149526)
Exactly right. As can be seen via the purchases of large swaths of private location data by the Department of Homeland Security and other government entities, essentially side stepping US citizens’ 4th amendment rights [1].

[1] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/new-records-det...

[ Parent | on HN ]