3 ms·
1. TikTok busted for reading the contents of users' clipboard[1] 2. Microsoft and the NSA have had a very cozy relationship for a long time 3. Microsoft is bi
by mikece 6y ago
1. TikTok busted for reading the contents of users' clipboard[1]
2. Microsoft and the NSA have had a very cozy relationship for a long time
3. Microsoft is bidding to buy TikTok's US operations.
Yeah, I must be crazy to think something SIGINT-wise is afoot.
[1]Didn't the LinkedIn app also get busted for reading the content of the clipboard on iOS?
- moksly 6y agoSure, but at the same time you can understand why the US government is cool with the US government spying while not being cool with the Chinese government spying.
- mschuster91 6y ago> Yeah, I must be crazy to think something SIGINT-wise is afoot. The aim IMHO rather is to have an avenue to prevent Russian and Chinese propaganda from spreading.
- gruez 6y ago>Yeah, I must be crazy to think something SIGINT-wise is afoot. How is it useful to the NSA? I get how tiktok would be useful for propaganda purposes, but it doesn't seem useful for actual intelligence gathering. Are terrorists going to upload short video clips of themselves planning a bombing? Do criminals do their business transactions over tiktok?
- sct202 6y agoMicrosoft also operates Bing, Linkedin and Github in China behind the firewall, so they're apparently trustworthy enough for China too.
- noahtallen 6y agoI think a pretty large number of apps read the clipboard to do things like content detection. For example, most map apps will tell you if you have an address copied to your clipboard, which would trigger that message every time you open the app. Though I understand the suspicion, these kinds of features are so common that I’m not a big fan of reading into it very much. That is, unless you are specifically a malicious developer. I honestly doubt that the majority of these features are malicious. You never know for sure, though.