Hey! You are on TIktok now ! Are you Safe?

Mon, Apr 20, 2020 9:29 PM Safety

TikTok is one of the most popular apps in the world and had more than 1.5 billion users by the end of 2019. Many adults are on TikTok because of their love of music, video games, movies, and other social media.

The app allows users to create professional-looking videos that they can share with others. Originally called a musical, TikTok serves as a creative outlet that provides users with simple editing tools, including the ability to add hits to soundtracks.

Due to its popularity with a young audience, TikTok's safety is a concern shared by many users. Parents of young teenagers, in particular, will want to keep a close eye on who is viewing and uploading content and who has access to the app. Although Tik Tok, a popular app, is largely secure, there are still some concerns, particularly with regard to the privacy and security of the content on the site. In addition, the popularity of Tik Tokyo has attracted scammers who wanted to exploit the widespread reach of this app to defraud users such as hackers, scammers, and hackers.

In this guide, we explain what TikTok is and some of the safety concerns associated with its use. We also offer practical tips to help users stay safe and enjoy the app.

In the TikTok app, users can create and share short videos (15 seconds or more) of themselves or their friends. Multiple videos can be combined to create a story of up to 60 seconds, and multiple videos of the same person or group of people in one video.

One of the main attractions of TikTok is the ease with which users can create professional-looking videos. Since then, users have already expanded their use to include music video creation, and some have added video soundtracks. The current iteration of the app was originally a musical.ly purchased by ByteDance in 2017 and integrated into the company's Chinese Tik Tok app.

Another attraction of TikTok is the short length of the videos, and in view of dwindling attention spans, a limit of 15 seconds seems ideal, as it allows the consumption of a lot of content in a short time. 

This is probably why TikTok is so popular with younger users: 60 percent of users are between 16 and 24 years old.

This means that minors can be exposed to inappropriate content, and because TikTok monitors so many users, users can interact with the outside world, which is an inherent privacy and security risk. Tik Tok is largely safe when used correctly, but because it has such a limited limit on the content that can be posted, it can also be vulnerable to hackers and other forms of cyberattacks such as malware.

ISIS has even been able to use TikTok to spread propaganda to its followers, including videos of the corpses of armed fighters.

When it comes to privacy, users, especially younger ones, can make bad choices when it comes to posting content online. On social media sites, users tend to post content that they later regret, for example, because they might reveal personal information. When an account is set up in public, it means that anyone using TikTok can view the uploaded video. Depending on your account settings, you never know what comments and messages you might receive.

This kind of open forum opens the door to bullying, harassment and inappropriate relationships in social media apps as well as on TikTok itself.

As TikTok's popularity soared, reports of network scams also surfaced, which we will discuss in the next section. The most important thing is that the site is not only a dating site but also a social network.

In the privacy settings of the app, you can mainly determine how much information is public and private, but we will discuss this in more detail later. There is still no clear indication of what TikTok is doing with the information users enter into the apps.

According to a recent report, TikTok is being investigated as a threat to national security. This has led to speculation that it may censor content or work on behalf of the Chinese government. Tik Tok claims that all US users "data is stored in the US, but that data may still be bound by Chinese law, which requires it to provide data to the Chinese government upon request. Increasing criticism of Tik Tokyo's censorship practices in China comes as it has so far barely reported the protests in Hong Kong.

In response, TikTok has taken steps to reassure users, including stopping the use of China-based moderators to review content from abroad and hire a security chief for the app. Another concern is that U.S. Army personnel have been barred from using Tik Tok. A Senate bill has been introduced that bans the use of the app on US government devices such as iPads, iPhones and Android phones.

It is also worth mentioning that TikTok has been accused in the past of compromising the privacy of its users. In 2009, a dispute was settled over the failure to protect the competitiveness of minors. The lawsuit alleged that users under the age of 13 had to enter their names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses as part of the account setup process.

TikTok is also accused of collecting location data from minors and other users in 2015 and 2016. This information was posted on the Platform as part of the Company's advertising campaign and in violation of its privacy policies.

Scams: The popularity of the platform on TikTok has been seen as an opportunity for scammers, and they have used TikTok - rather sophisticated scams - to get users to sign up for adult dating sites. Fraudsters have stolen videos from other social media sites and used them to lure Tik-Tok users to Snapchat.

Adult dating sites: Sexually explicit photos and videos are shown on TikTok to encourage users to click on adult dating sites. When users click on the link and subscribe to the page, scammers pay when they sign up - above. Many sites with adult data charge click fees - due to the installation, but some only for downloading the video and not for the installation itself.
As a social media platform, TikTok has attracted its fair share of fake accounts, and users could, for example, pose as popular Tik Tok celebrities to gain likes and followers.

Fake accounts: Others set up fake accounts just to damage the reputation of an individual or company, and once you popularize an account, it becomes your true identity. Paid likes and followers are just a bad idea, but TikTok accounts that sell them sell them for much more than that.
Firstly, it violates the platform's terms of use, and, moreover, there is no guarantee that the payee will keep his promise and the same will disappear.

How to Improved your TikTok Safety and Privacy

• Abide by the age guidelines

• Educate children about online privacy and scams

• Adjust privacy settings

• Use digital wellbeing features

• Report inappropriate content

• Delete content that poses a risk

• Delete unused accounts

 

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