Now it’s not surprising to learn that applications track user data and actions. Rather, it is the default. However, not everyone knows that programs can track activity even if you have never used them or even do not install them. This is due to special markers embedded in the site code. An investigation by Consumer Reports caught TikTok in such actions.
Video service TikTok installs trackers called “pixels” on hundreds of websites. Consumer Reports studied about 20,000 websites looking for TikTok tags. The pool includes the top 1,000 most visited websites and many of the largest .org, .edu, and .gov domains, as they tend to contain sensitive user data. As it turns out, data is shared with TikTok by the United Methodist Church, the Arizona Department of Economic Security, and other organizations that have sensitive personal and commercial information about users.
TikTok’s “pixels” regularly transmit site visitor IP addresses, unique identification numbers, pages viewed, keystroke logs, text typed, and search queries. This activity is in no way dependent on whether the user has a TikTok account.
Consumer Reports reports that Meta and Google markers found far outnumber TikTok. This is natural, given that the video service’s advertising platform is new to most markets, while Google and Facebook/Meta have been doing tracking for years.
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Consumer Reports notes that such actions are possible only due to the modesty and invisibility of embedded data. During the course of the investigation, some of the organizations were notified of TikTok markers on their websites, after which the researchers discover that the corresponding “pixels” have been removed from them. However, the sites remained labeled by Microsoft, Google and other companies.
As a countermeasure against surveillance, Consumer Reports cites the use of alternative browsers, extensions and applications that restrict network activity for security and privacy reasons.
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Source: tech spot
