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Ask HN: Is tiktok reading and uploading user contact as it is doing in China?

32 points by jerryzh ↗ HN
A China user prosecuted Tiktok for it read and uploaded users contact without permission and it is not mentioned in its privacy statement. The Tiktok claimed in the court that contact is not private. The information stored in contact is information of society members instead of personal privacy and should be allowed to use freely. This statement is so ridiculous that I took it as April fool's day's joke at first sight but it turns out to be true. I have heard that Tiktok has been unexpectedly successful abroad so I am wondering whether its terrifying claim is a result of China's poor protection of privacy or it is just such a terrible company.

17 comments

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oarsinsync
> The Tiktok claimed in the court that contact is not private ... I am wondering whether its terrifying claim is a result of China's poor protection of privacy or it is just such a terrible company

Based on this[0] conversation thread, there is at least some agreement of the view that contact information doesn't qualify as private information, and is fair game.

Personally, I disagree, but then I'm not part of the ad-driven economy, so it's easy for me to not need to vote against my own source of income.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20214564

koboll
Why anyone would trust an app from China with any of their data is beyond me. The firewalls between business and government that we take for granted in the West simply don't exist there, and the PRC leverages the widespread ignorance of this to its advantage.
Calamity
Indeed, in the west we are lucky (in some sense) that our tech is big enough that it is able to band together and stand up against unreasonable demands from the government.

In China, I can't imagine Huawei/Tencent/etc refusing to help the government break into someone's phone or create a backdoor into an "encrypted" chat.

slezyr
> Indeed, in the west we are lucky (in some sense) that our tech is big enough that it is able to band together and stand up against unreasonable demands from the government.

I assume microsoft isn't big enough, because it was stripping encryption from Skype and making it centralized.

Calamity
As far as I know, Skype is E2EE..
throwaway857384
Being a devil's advocate here, but why would anyone trust an American company with there data?

I get China is the bad guy and all that, but American companies are basically doing the same thing, they just have different ways of describing the process.

Calamity
Like I just commented, because American companies aren't slaves to a government "master". As much as we sometimes like to hate on Google/FB and other big tech, their size allows them to act as a balance of power against an overly-invasive government.

For example, WhatsApp (and Messenger) being E2EE by default(with confidence through audits) is completely counter to what a government seeking full public surveillance would want. Same thing with Apple's encrypted phones.

The government can't just waltz in and ask for the data as a) the companies can't help even if they wanted through the very nature of the in-built encryption b) the government can't threaten to shut them down without public uproar

catacombs
> American companies aren't slaves to a government "master"

They are slaves to their shareholders.

Calamity
I think there is a good chapter from "Business Adventures" where it talks about and describes some typical annual shareholder meetings - from the book, it seemed essentially to be lip service by the company. Your average shareholder doesn't have a say. It would be more precise to say "large controlling interests" and by extension "board of directors"
diggan
> Why anyone would trust an app from China with any of their data is beyond me.

I don't think this is exclusive to China. Why would anyone trust any app from anywhere with any of their data is beyond me. Simply assume that anything you put in any app/website to be public and you'll feel a lot better.

Facebook is as likely to share all their data with their government as Tiktok is, simply the cost of doing business anywhere.

DeonPenny
Cause FB is having public fights about privacy in the public eye
catacombs
> Why anyone would trust an app from China with any of their data is beyond me.

I agree. But tell that to the hundreds of thousands of teenagers who use the app as a major social media network. They don't care. It's all about the followers, likes and, for some, endorsement deals.

Calamity
Something makes me feel that it is down to their general approach to privacy and not just the portion of it that is "within China".
yuanchenxi95
Toutiao(another product of Bytedance - the owner of Tiktok) has announced a clarification of the statement: https://ibb.co/RHH8JT5. Toutiao disagree entirely with the statement that the contact information is not part of the users' privacy.
stevenicr
Another question in regards to tiktok (and other android apps) - I got an email saying that a kid I help mentor had given tiktok access to their gmail account (something like that).

Does this mean that a default install asks permission to access and read your gmail, and that would mean they could harvest all of your contacts, and emails sent / recvd, maybe calendar stuff too?