TikTok may have violated Google's privacy policy for collecting Android users' data without permission

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By now, you should have heard the news about TikTok facing a ban thanks to US President Trump due to 'spying'. It may sound ridiculous but the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) just posted news that TikTok may have violated Google's privacy policy for tracking MAC addresses from Android users.

According to WSJ, TikTok has been collecting these data for at least 15 months and stopped in November last year. Despite Google's privacy system, TikTok managed to get around it with a loophole with an "unusual extra layer of encryption". What's more, there was no notification nor agreement for TikTok users about the data collection, as the company had already included the MAC data with their information to track their behaviour.

In case you're wondering about iOS, there seem to be no cases for iPhone users except for the recent discovery of clipboard accessibility by iOS 14 beta users. MAC address collection is not new though, with an estimated 1.4% of Android apps are taking advantage of the loophole but normally they would be banned by Apple and Google for this. Regardless, this news is putting TikTok in hot water now and Google is investigating the matter as we speak.

Despite TikTok's future, many users still enjoy using the app to express themselves with short video clips, doing challenges and making memes. We will continue to monitor this so stay tuned for more trending tech news at TechNave.com.