Misleading lies and rumors on social media are expressive from iStock. The study results come amidst a security dispute over how social media companies use the information they collect. Modern technology has put us all under a microscope, making us all monitored from the electronic devices we deal with entirely. So what about social media sites that have become addictive to everyone?
It seems that social media sites follow your every move and collect massive amounts of personal data from millions of users who do not want it, but some of them increase the amount of information collected more than others.
The "TikTok" application is the biggest tool for collecting data, collecting more information than any other social media application, according to a study conducted by Internet 2.0 Cybersecurity Company, quoted by the Daily Mail website.
The most famous video-sharing application in the world, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has about one billion active users worldwide, but it has more than double the number of followers in its source code compared to the industry average, according to the newspaper's report.
"TikTok" tracking program secretly collects data about users to adjust the algorithm that runs its main summary. But it can also collect information about Wi-Fi networks and SIM cards, raising concerns about how this data is used.
But the company is not alone in this, as both Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat have ranked in the top eight of the 22 major companies that store the most data. Meanwhile, "Facebook" was ranked as one of the best companies, coming in at 16th place in the Internet 2.0 evaluation.
Using her own program Malcore, Internet 2.0 assigned each application a score based on the amount of personal information collected, with TikTok recording a total of 63.1, leading the app and its requirements to be described as "excessively invasive and not necessary for its operation".
The study's result comes amidst security disputes over how social media companies use the information they collect.
TikTok responded, stating: "It appears that this report is based on the same deceptive analyses of Internet 2.0 that were conducted last year, and recent reports and studies contradict its findings. TikTok is not unique in the amount of data it collects, and in fact, it collects less data than many popular mobile applications."
David Robinson, a former Australian Army Intelligence Officer and co-founder of Internet 2.0, said the company has "long-term privacy and security concerns" about TikTok.
Alan Woodward, a cybersecurity professor at the University of Surrey, said, "TikTok appears to be collecting information, and you have to ask why, beyond creating a complete file on someone. The type of data collected is so broad that it is hard not to infer that it is being used for more than just marketing and creating profiles. This, in my opinion, is a cause for concern, especially in the current geopolitical environment where China has proven itself to be a fully-fledged government player."