The future of the social media platform TikTok is changing by the day. However, unless the U.S. Supreme Court overturns a proposed ban, or there is other federal intervention, the platform will go dark for 170 million US users on January 19.
Under federal legislation approved last spring, TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance was ordered to sell the platform or be banned in the U.S. Concerns about the platform being a national security threat led to the creation of the law.
“I think most of the concern stems from the lack of transparency with how TikTok collects our data and what they may do with it,” explains Tyler Baeten, Cybersecurity Specialist instructor at FVTC. “There is concern that the amount of data that TikTok collects, whether it’s fingerprint or face ID biometrics or device IDs, could be used in ways we do not support.”
Tyler was recently asked to share his thoughts about why TikTok is such a security concern and also what would happen to users’ access if the looming ban became a reality.
