After discovering in March that popular video-sharing service TikTok was accessing content on iOS users' clipboards, the company vowed to fix the problem. However, it has now emerged that TikTok has continued to engage in clipboard spying practices, along with 53 other iOS apps. The phenomenon was first discovered by researchers Talal Haj Kakry and Tommy Mysk, but the scale of the problem was revealed last week with the release of the iOS 14 developer beta, which warns users whenever an app accesses the clipboard. . The services found guilty of invasive practices cover a variety of genres and include leading apps like The New York Times, Fox News, Fruit Ninja, Bejeweled, Viber, AliExpress, and more. It's not clear if the same selection of apps also scratches Android users' clipboard data.
IOS clipboard data
Although much of the data copied to the clipboard is likely harmless, a problem arises if a user has copied sensitive personal information, login credentials, crypto wallet addresses, currency, or any other form of private data. The problem is also compounded by Apple's universal clipboard feature, which sees a single clipboard shared between all devices with a common Apple ID that are within a few feet of each other. The feature is designed to allow Apple fans to easily copy and paste data between multiple iOS devices, but in this case, an invasive app installed on one device can also read data copied from another. Though it promised to end the practice months ago, TikTok has been found to still be accessing clipboard data, and much more frequently than expected. The application clears the information each time the user enters a punctuation mark or presses the space bar; in other words, every few seconds. "After the iOS 14 beta on June 22, users saw notifications when using a number of popular apps," a TikTok spokesperson told the Telegraph. “For TikTok, this was triggered by a feature designed to identify repetitive spam behavior. We have already submitted an updated version of the app to the App Store by removing the antispam feature to remove any potential confusion. "TikTok is committed to protecting user privacy and being transparent about how our app works." The developers of 10% Happier: Meditation and Hotel Tonight quickly joined TikTok vowing to fight the invasive practice, but the other criminals still have not commented.The full list of clipboard scraping apps is as follows: News-ABC News
- Al Jazeera English
- CBC News
- CBS News
- CNBC
- Fox News
- Breaking news
- New York Times
- NPR
- ntv news
- Reuters
- Russia today
- Star News
- The Economist
- The Huffington Post
- Wall Street Newspaper
- Vice News Games
- 8 ball pool
- INCREDIBLE !!!
- Bejeweled
- block puzzle
- Classic Bejeweled
- Classic Bejeweled HD
- FlipTheGun
- Fruit Ninja
- golfers
- Alphabet soup
- Love Nikki
- my emma
- Plants vs Zombies Heroes
- Pooking - Billiards City
- PUBG Mobile
- Tomb of the mask
- Tomb of the Mask: Color
- Total Party Killer
- Social Watermark
- TIC Tac
- Talk
- Truecaller
- Viber
- Zoosk Otro
- 10% happier: meditation
- 5-0 Radio Police Scanner
- Accuweather
- AliExpress shopping app
- Bathroom and beyond the bed
- Dazn
- Hotels.com
- Hotel tonight
- Excess stock
- Pigment - Coloring book for adults coloring
- Ticket Sky
- The Via Ars Technica weather network