More than 26 million people in the United States spend time each month on TikTok, the video-sharing social media app that has been downloaded more than one billion times globally.
If you haven’t already heard of the app through a teenager you know, you might learn about it through ads if you turn on the TV or sit down in the movie theater. “Just real people, real videos that make your day,” a voice intones in one commercial for the app.
Filming a viral TikTok video is an easy way to become famous, participate in trends, and connect with other users. There’s just one problem. It also might be a way to compromise national security. Owned by Beijing-based tech company ByteDance, the app has raised concerns that China could use it to gather data on U.S. citizens.
Both the U.S. Army and the Navy recently banned TikTok, citing security concerns. The app may have 500 million active users, but those users could be doing the U.S. a disservice. TikTok is now prohibited from government-owned phones in both of these branches of the military.
Army spokeswoman Lt. Col Robin L. Ochoa said a recent cyber-awareness message “identifies TikTok as having potential security risks associated with its use.”
The Army may have made up its mind, but what about the average American? Of the 26.5 million monthly active users in the U.S., how many will stop to think whether the app could be compromising their own information?
The question may sound paranoid, but the concern underneath it prompted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, to write a joint letter in October to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence calling for an investigation into the risks of the China-owned company.
“TikTok’s terms of service and privacy policies describe how it collects data from its users and their devices, including user content and communications, IP address, location-related data, device identifiers, cookies, metadata, and other sensitive personal information,” they wrote.
This isn’t the only supposedly fun-loving app that has raised such concerns. Schumer also sounded the alarm over FaceApp, a face-aging program that recently went viral and prompted concerns over whether it could access users’ photos. The app is owned by a Russia-based company.
The popularity of TikTok and programs such as FaceApp speak to our desire to join in national trends and make fun, silly content featuring ourselves. But we are also quick to jump on trends without questioning the consequences, and in the digital age, accidentally relinquishing private information has never been easier to do.
Despite most Americans’ willingness to unwittingly give away their information for the sake of entertainment, it’s time to start paying a bit more attention to what we could be revealing.
