Battling allegations for the alleged privacy breach, TikTok has said that it will now stop accessing clipboard content on iOS devices after an update has revealed that it was still snooping on users’ content as per a report in The Telegraph.
Notably, TikTok had said the same on accessing clipboard content in March and had said to bring in changes within a few weeks but failed to do so, The Telegraph report suggests.
As per the latest revelation, when a third-party app accesses a device’s clipboard with iOS 14, a notification pops up. Users have found out that TikTok has been eyeing content from the clipboard, even when the apps were running in the background.
However, TikTok alone has not been caught snooping on users in this way, rather other apps including AccuWeather, Overstock, AliExpress, Mobile Call of Duty, Patreon, and Google News have also been found violating users’ privacy in a similar manner.
TikTok has been in the eye of the storm for a very long period of time now. The fresh set of allegations against TikTok traded another blow to the Beijing-based company that was already under severe scrutiny from government agencies across the world for the close connection its parent company Bytedance shares with the Chinese Communist Party.
The Federal Trade Commission had in 2019 fined the company $5.7 million as it found that the company was in violation of a Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The FTC has concluded that TikTok used to allow children aged below 13 years to sign up on the platform that clearly violated parental control.