Recently discovered TikTok's security flaws make it possible to spoof the source of SMS messages, alter people's feeds and accounts, and also access sensitive personal information via API calls.
TikTok has struggled with an ongoing string of issues involving child privacy. A new one has emerged as a parents group in the Netherlands has filed a $1.7 billion suit against it in Amsterdam.
A new TikTok suit was filed in California and will also see participation from the FTC, which initiated an investigation into the company's child privacy practices several months ago. The company remains under a prior court order involving COPPA violations.
A case of what TikTok says was the mistaken storage of EU data on a server in China appears to be concluding with a €530 million fine for the video giant, under charges of violating Article 46(1) of the GDPR and its requirement to "verify, guarantee and demonstrate" that its data transfers were kept adequately secure.
TikTok was dealt another blow when it was discovered to have been engaging in undisclosed user tracking in the Android version of its app.
It's fair to say that TikTok is having an even rougher 2020 than most companies with French privacy regulator CNIL opening a probe into parent company ByteDance's operations.
The opening of the Irish data center is part of the final stage of a EU privacy plan TikTok kicked off in mid-2021, seeking to address user data security concerns and the legal status of its international data transfers.
Contract for the Web wants to create a better internet at a time when huge corporations are failing to respect privacy, governments can no longer be counted on to provide affordable and accessible Internet, and citizens are no longer interested promoting civil discourse.
Today, data flows have become infinitely more complex in what has come to be known as surveillance capitalism. The challenge is how to future proof privacy legislation, learning the lesson of what worked with credit reporting laws as well as other more recent measures.
With six million Instagram accounts hacked, are passwords now a liability and is it time to turn on that Instagram two-factor authentication?
