Apple’s iOS 14 Exposes Apps Like TikTok Have Been Spying On iPhone Users
Image via Wachiwit / Shutterstock.com
Installers of Apple’s new iOS 14 beta version have discovered that the update reveals if your clipboard information is being borrowed by another app. One of the main culprits? TikTok.
Apple’s clipboard function helps users store information temporarily to share with apps. However, when you copy sensitive data like a bank account number, other apps can read this information right from your clipboard.
Previously, a couple of developers found that the copy-and-paste feature in iOS was sharing information to several applications without notice. One of the developers, Tommy Mysk, told Digital Trends that the problem had been sorted since the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month, and that iOS 14 will now show a banner alert to notify iPhone users if an app has extracted info from a user’s clipboard.
This week, The Telegraph reported that users with the beta iOS 14 version have started to receive alerts that various apps had gained access to clipboard data. Some of these apps include AccuWeather, AliExpress, Call of Duty Mobile, Google News, Overstock, Patreon, and TikTok.
Jeremy Burge of Emojipedia posted a video on Twitter showing how often TikTok seems to have been accessing his iPhone’s clipboard. Take a look at it below.
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
[via Phone Arena, cover image via Wachiwit / Shutterstock.com]
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