Social media sites track your every move and collect massive amounts of personal data from millions of unwilling users, but some of them are guilty of collecting more information than others.
TikTok is the largest data-gathering tool, collecting more than any other social media app or messaging service, according to a study by cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0.
The popular video-sharing app, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has about 1 billion active users worldwide. But it has more than twice as many trackers in its source code as the industry average.
TikTok's bot surreptitiously collects data about users to fine-tune the algorithm that powers its main feed. But it can also collect information about your wi-fi and Sim card, which raises concerns about how that data is used.
But the company is not alone in this. Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat ranked first in the top eight out of the 22 major companies that absorb the most data - while Facebook was ranked As one of the best companies, it ranked 16th in the Internet 2.0 evaluation.
Using its Malcore software, Internet 2.0 gave each app a score based on the amount of personal information collected, with TikTok scoring a total of 63.1.
Nine trackers were found and "too many permissions and warnings about dangerous code" lead to their score, with the Internet 2.0 brand of tracking level described as: "excessively intrusive and not necessary to run the app".
Microsoft Teams — popular for its group work calls — had four trackers but a high number of permission requests, giving it a score of 38, which puts it in fourth place.
While the Outlook email service, with an estimated 400 million users globally, ranked fifth with 35.9 and seven trackers, followed by Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and LinkedIn, which all scored around 34 - higher than The industry average of 28.8. Gmail scored 29.6 while WeChat was found to have five trackers.
The Facebook app scored one of the lowest because of "very few code warnings", despite a large number of permission requests.
The Signal messaging service - favored by the British Army over rival WhatsApp for organizing daily events - was one of the best apps, with Facebook Messenger and Discord also scoring highly.
The study's findings come amid a security row over how information collected by social media companies is used.
David Robinson, a former Australian Army intelligence officer and co-founder of Internet 2.0, said the company had "long-term privacy and security concerns" about TikTok.
Alan Woodward, professor of cyber security at the University of Surrey, said: “TikTok appears to be collecting information, and you have to wonder why, other than creating a complete profile on someone. The type of data is so broad that it is hard not to conclude that it is being used for more than just "Marketing and kind of profiling people for the sake of marketing. And that, I think, is a concern, especially in the current geopolitical environment where China is establishing itself as a quite assertive state player."
TikTok said: “This report appears to be based on the same misleading analyzes of Internet 2.0 that were conducted last year. Recent reports and studies contradict its conclusions. TikTok is not unique in the amount of information it collects, and in fact it collects less data.” of many popular mobile apps.
Source: Daily Mail