23.12.2022 update: be very careful because TikTok employees actually have the ability to track your location if you use the app.
On December 22, ByteDance admitted that four of their employees used the app as a surveillance method for journalists who reported on TikTok’s ties with the Chinese government.
You read that right: worried about what journalists might discover about TikTok, employees actually used the app to track multiple journalists. In short, NO. You cannot stop TikTok from tracking you.
Tiktok privacy concerns have been rising since the app’s release but, with recent reports, it’s clear that it’s essential to learn how to turn off Tiktok tracking. Still, no doubt about it, it’s a fun app and it’s hard to stop using it.
Let’s see exactly what type of data TikTok collects, what they do with it and then we’ll give you some helpful tips to stop Tiktok from tracking you.
In October 2022, Forbes released a concerning Tiktok tracking report where the company was accused of planning to use the app to monitor the physical location of specific American citizens.
According to the outlet, the ByteDance Internal Audit and Risk Control department, which usually investigates potential misconduct by current and former employees, had actually planned to collect data for someone who had no relationship with the company.
“But the material reviewed by Forbes indicates that ByteDance’s Internal Audit team was planning to use this location information to surveil individual American citizens, not to target ads or any of these other purposes. Forbes is not disclosing the nature and purpose of the planned surveillance referenced in the materials in order to protect sources. TikTok and ByteDance did not answer questions about whether Internal Audit has specifically targeted any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists,” said this TikTok tracking report.
ByteDance quickly denied the story, saying that it does not collect “precise” GPS data to track users and the app has never been used to target “members of the US government, activists, public figures or journalists”.
Earlier, news outlet TheWrap obtained two studies that say TikTok and its parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, have full access to your data.
The studies were made by white hat security experts, aka people who hack in order to test security boundaries and alert the public to threats. According to the outlet, their findings were verified with five independent experts.
And those reports check out with other sources as well. Marketing company URL Genius found that TikTok and YouTube collect more user personal data than any other social media app.
