At the end of February, the public telephones of the United States of America, Canada and the European Union were resounding with alarm: TikTok, the popular Chinese application, would be banned from these devices, allegedly. exploration by users to have victims and be able to use the application. The message went around the world and as a result, TikTok announced the “Clover Project”, which consists of three open centers: one in Ireland and one in Norway, to protect the data of its European users; In this way, the security requirements that the EU requires.
No investigations have been conducted that could corroborate the strong handing over of data from TikTok to the Chinese government, but the case highlighted the need to take precautionary measures and adapt actions to protect data and information. This is an area in which most developers of mobile applications and social networks still fail, since there is not full transparency about the data that is collected from individual users.
This case adds to the conflict between Huawei and the United States in 2018 when it accused the technology of collecting data and more confidential data, through its infrastructure, to send them to the Chinese government. Huawei took three years to recover from that investment.
Another thing with TikTok is that, according to data from the Sensor Data Tower, it would be the first app that is not owned by Meta (owned by Facebook and Instagram) to reach 3,000 million downloads worldwide and therefore maintain it. power over that number of men becomes manifold. In fact, a report issued by Internet 2.0 Australia in July 2022 states that TikTok generates “excess data collection”, such as the site users are on and what other applications are on the device. Meta is often accused of something like this.
The immense use and role that social networks play in the daily lives of millions of people, in different latitudes of the planet, raise the question of what happens behind the scenes between companies that develop applications, because they do not know, with the sum. clearly, how they work internally to collect user data.
For users, organizations such as the Spanish Agency for Data Protection constantly provide recommendations to maintain control over the information of developers, suggesting to avoid publications, closing the session every time you stop using the application, deactivating the site on the device and navigating incognito mode through search engines, among others .
All these options can help privacy on the part of users, however, the main challenge continues to be that applications to develop transparency in security considerations, such as “terms and conditions of use” and “privacy policy”. “They are more than text in which users just click “next” to quickly install applications.
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