Apps With Ties To Communist China (Hint: Delete Them Now)

Social media is just another form of addiction. The Chinese master this (think of all the Fentanyl they ship to the USA through Mexico). Get rid of it.

TikTok is already banned at the federal level, but the latest ban in the U.S. House of Representatives includes a handful of other ByteDance apps you or someone in your life might be using:

• CapCut: Video-editing tools and filters 
• Hypic: Photo-editing tools and filters
• Lark: Collaboration app designed for work
• Lemon8: Social media app focused on fashion, beauty, travel, food and other lifestyle categories

Let’s dive deeper into what they collect

If you think the ByteDance paranoia is overblown, here’s the laundry list of data you give up every time you scroll TikTok. It’s safe to assume other ByteDance-developed apps do the same.

It’s a long list, so slow down while you read it. Remember, all this is being sent to China:

• Your name, age, username, email address, password, phone number and location.
• Your IP address, cellphone carrier, time zone, device model and operating system.
• Biometric identifiers, like facial IDs and voiceprints.
• The content of your messages, plus exactly when you send, receive and read them.
• If you buy stuff via TikTop Shop, you’ll give up your purchase information, including credit card numbers and billing and shipping addresses.
• Your activities on other websites and apps (or in stores), including info about what you purchased.
• File names and types.
• Your keystroke patterns and rhythms.
• Objects and scenery that show up in your videos, including tourist attractions, shops and other landmarks.
• The webpages you visit the most and how you interact with them.
• Any text, images and videos on your clipboard.
• Information about your videos, images and audio files.

TikTok also embeds data into its images and ads to track the time and date you view a page, complete with a description. The amount of data TikTok collects is so extensive that it can come dangerously close to cloning your entire phone. 

Where TikTok stores its data has also been a major red flag for Congress. Information collected in the U.S. is connected straight to servers in China, though the company says it’s changed its systems to store American data in the U.S. Yeah, right. That won’t stop China from getting it — who are they kidding?

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