News

TikTok has been snooping on your iPhone’s clipboard – now they say they’re going to stop

An update has been pushed to iOS, should be available today.

by
Josiah Motley
June 26, 2020

Image: KnowTechie

Thanks to a new alert feature in iOS 14, beta users have started reporting that popular social platform TikTok seems to be doing some sketchy things behind the scenes. The initial report comes from The Telegraph and a variety of users sharing screen recordings of the issues.

Essentially, what is happening is when iOS 14 users go to leave a comment on a TikTok video an alert would pop up at the top of the screen saying something like “TikTok pasted from Instagram” or “TikTok pasted from another device.”

This alert is part of iOS 14 where users can see exactly when an application is copying and pasting from their clipboard, but it’s hard to tell how (or if) this information is being sent back directly to TikTok.

iOS 14 beta has a banner to confirm when you paste from another device (eg copy on a Mac and paste on iPhone)

Seems to be bugging out and showing with every keystroke in TikTok pic.twitter.com/aFKNfZnpyb

— Jeremy Burge (@jeremyburge) June 24, 2020

As to why the platform was accessing the clipboard so regularly, the company tells The Telegraph, “For TikTok, this was triggered by a feature designed to identify repetitive, spammy behavior.” Apps accessing the clipboard came under fire a couple of months back when it was revealed that there were multiple ones accessing clipboards for no obvious reason. This included AccuWeather, Overstock, Call of Duty Mobile, and Starbucks.

TikTok has now pushed an update on iOS that stops access to the clipboard. It should be available to users today. No word yet on if or when the company plans on deploying a similar update to Android.

What do you think? Does this make you nervous about using TikTok? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.