Welcome back to Patrick Boyle on finance. Today let's talk about the TikTok app
and its potential ban in the United States. We'll discuss
why the U.S. government is getting involved the merger talks with Microsoft
and what other apps could possibly be banned as well.
TicTok is a video sharing social networking app
owned by a chinese company called byte dance
over the last few days president Trump has suggested that he might ban
TikTok from the United States upsetting the millions of people who
make or watch TikTok videos. China is of course increasingly in the
sights of the Trump administration as the trade war drags on and the next
election looms closer. Discussions of a ban have been coupled
with reports that microsoft or other u.s companies may potentially
buy the u.s operations of the app officials in washington have for a long
time voiced concerns that the chinese government
could get access to information about Americans who use the TikTok
app due to its Chinese ownership administration officials say that
Chinese owned technology companies pose a threat to national security
because the Chinese government has the ability to access
these companies data under local laws TikTok has denied that it is
associated with or influenced by the Chinese government.
Security researchers have apparently found that the TikTok iphone app
spies on iphone users by secretly reading the clipboard,
thus the app can read messages as they are typed on the phone
and track users locations. Earlier this year the same researchers found that
TikTok was found to be copying clipboard data on android devices
which the developers by dance blamed on the use of an outdated google
advertising SDK which they promised to change. The fact
that the app is doing the same on apple devices
cast doubt on the claim that this was accidental.
According to Forbes tick tock grabs the contents from the iOS clipboard every
one to three key strokes essentially working like a keystroke
logger bike dance claim to have since amended
these intrusive behaviors reddit co-founder and ceo steve huffman
has called the app fundamentally parasitic
saying that it uses fingerprinting technology
that is truly terrifying describing tick tock as
spyware it's not just the us government who are concerned about tick tock
last month Scott Morrison Australia's prime minister
said that the Australian government was closely monitoring tick tock
given concerns over its data gathering and security let me know in the comments
section if you use tick-tock and if you have privacy concerns or do
you think it's significantly worse than the us-based
tech giants on friday night as i mentioned earlier president donald trump
said that he planned to ban the app possibly through an executive order and
right now tick tock's owner is said to be trying
to address the administration's concerns by pledging to sell the app's u.s
operations could trump actually ban the app well
he could try using a law called the international emergency economic powers
act to block some foreign products from
american app stores or the u.s government could put tick
tock's owner on a list that prohibits american
firms from selling goods to it without a license
the u.s administration has had some success in this area in the past
in 2019 a chinese company that had bought the dating app grinder
agreed to sell it to a us-based company after four years of ownership
under pressure from the trump administration
the committee on foreign investment in the united states
reportedly informed the chinese owners that their
ownership of grinder was a national security risk according to reuters
the acquisition had not been submitted for cfius
review which is perhaps why the committee made
the rare request to undo an already completed acquisition
microsoft and byte dans have been discussing a transaction over the past
few weeks according to multiple people involved
with microsoft president brad smith visiting officials in washington to see
if a takeover by a u.s company would reduce the u.s
government's concerns these talks were thrown into uncertainty
on friday after trump vowed to ban the app saying
we are not an m a country bite dance has previously discussed selling a majority
stake of tick tock to american investors but the trump
administration appears to have rejected that course of action according to the
new york times some commentators including byte dance
executives have said that they believed that mr trump's intervention was a
negotiating tactic intended to compel the chinese group
to sell the us business to microsoft at a lower price than it had been hoping
for tick tock has taken many steps in order
to paint itself as an american brand it hired kevin mayer from disney as its
chief executive in may and it highlighted its prominent
american investors it says that it's hired almost a
thousand employees in the united states and plans to hire 10 000 more
tick-tock claims to store its data in the united states
and to have strict controls on employee access to the data controlled by the app
according to the financial times microsoft will press ahead with talks to
buy tick tocks us canadian australian and new zealand
operations despite the reservations of donald trump
following a conversation between microsoft ceo and the us president
so could other chinese-owned apps and software-based services
also be targeted by the trump administration
well yesterday u.s secretary of state mike pompeo
alleged that some chinese technology companies
were feeding data directly to the chinese communist party
the most obvious additional target is wechat
the only other product that pompeo called out by name
wechat is sometimes described as being a social network
but it's really much more than that it allows users to make
payments run additional mini programs it works as a dating app it provides
news messaging and other social activities
the bbc described it as being best thought of as like a secondary operating
system that sits on top of ios or android wechat
is viewed as being a key instrument in china's internal surveillance apparatus
and is allegedly used by the chinese communist party
to pump propaganda to the chinese diaspora security researchers at
canada's citizen lab detailed how documents and
images transmitted amongst non-china-registered wechat users
were being screened for politically sensitive content gathering data to be
used to refine censorship efforts within china itself
tencent the owner of wechat says that all
content shared amongst international wechat users
stays private the best hint as to what additional apps might be banned comes
from india where they recently banned 59
different china-linked apps on the grants that
they threatened india's sovereignty and security tick
tock and wechat were on the list along with
other big names such as baidu maps baidu translate and webio the
chinese version of twitter mike pompeo suggested that software
which collects facial recognition patterns
is a security concern and although he didn't mention any product by name
there are many chinese companies that make such products
according to the bbc zoom is a service that might
also have concerns the popular video chat service was founded by a
chinese-born entrepreneur eric wan it has faced criticism for
having mistakenly routed some calls via china-based computer servers in the past
as well as having closed accounts that had hosted events
critical of the chinese government but had been based in countries added in
china zoom has recently announced that it will
stop offering its service directly to
china-based users and will instead provide it via local
partners starting on the 23rd of august this year
this timing may be a coincidence but the move does demonstrate that tech
companies may be wary of giving the us any reason
to question where their loyalties lie going forward
thanks for watching this to the end don't forget to hit the like
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