Apple had recently released iOS 14 during WWDC20 which primarily focused on stability and security. With this update, Apple has fixed a serious problem, where apps can secretly access the clipboard on users’ devices. The clipboard on your iPhone is used to temporarily store data that has been copied from one app and pasted onto another. Only one item from an app can be stored at a time. The problem is that when you copy some important data to the clipboard like a bank account number or any other sensitive information, some apps are able to grab this information right off of your clipboard. With the release of the beta version, users are warned whenever an app reads the last thing copied to the clipboard.
The popular social media platform “TikTok” was caught red-handed copying text from a user’s clipboard every few seconds, effectively logging their keystrokes without their knowledge.
Jeremy Burge, head of online emoji directory Emojipedia, posted a tweet of the data hovering in action, at first blaming it on the feature bugging out.
Okay so TikTok is grabbing the contents of my clipboard every 1-3 keystrokes. iOS 14 is snitching on it with the new paste notification pic.twitter.com/OSXP43t5SZ
— Jeremy Burge (@jeremyburge) June 24, 2020
According to TikTok, users were actually seeing “a feature designed to identify repetitive, spammy behaviour,” not a purposeful invasion of privacy.
“We have already submitted an updated version of the app to the App Store removing the anti-spam feature to eliminate any potential confusion,” the spokesperson said. “TikTok is committed to protecting users’ privacy and being transparent about how our app works.”
TikTok is an extremely popular video app that has had its share of controversy. At times TikTok has been the most popular app in the App Store and the Google Play Store. But the Peterson Institute for International Economics called it a “Huawei-sized problem” in terms of security issues. Currently, the app has 800 million active users, out of which 119 million users are from India.
We’re interested to see how TikTok is planning to fix the issue as this is not the first time they’ve been caught. iOS 14 is still not ready for deployment to the public yet, but it’s great to see how the new privacy features are helping iOS users keep their information safe, assuming that there will be no major issues during the public release this fall, you might want to install it right away.
What do you think of the situation? Share your thoughts in the comment section down below.
Last modified: July 1, 2020
[…] With iOS 14, all apps will be required to obtain user permission before tracking and App Store product pages will show summaries of developers’ self-reported privacy practices, According to Apple, “similar to a food label”. Users will also be able to upgrade existing accounts to Sign in with Apple, choose to share their approximate location rather than their precise location when granting any app location access, and get more transparency into an app’s use of the microphone and camera. We recently talked about how iOS 14 was able to catch TikTok spying on users as well. Click here to read the article. […]