The U.S. government doesn’t have a say in what you download, unless you use a government device. Starting Aug. 15, U.S. House of Representatives staffers are banned from using all ByteDance apps on government devices. 

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TikTok’s already out, but now the ban includes a handful of other 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

It all comes down to ByteDance’s ties to Communist China. It’s based in Beijing and is required by Chinese law to give the government access to collected data.

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:

• Your name, age, username, email address, password, phone number and location.
• Your IP address, cellphone carrier, time zone, the model of your device and the OS you use.
• 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 from the TikTop shop, your purchase information, including your credit card numbers, billing and shipping addresses.
• Your activities on other websites and apps (or in stores), including info on 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 web pages 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.

TikTok also embeds data into 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. 

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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 they have changed their systems to store American data in the U.S.

What about Temu?

Last year, one of my warnings about the mega-popular shopping app went viral. The hype is starting to fade, but Temu was the most downloaded app of its kind in the U.S. in 2023.

Temu’s tagline — “Shop like a billionaire” — refers to the low, low prices on everything from clothing to home goods to electronics. Though the company is based in the U.S., Temu is owned by PDD Holdings, which is based in China. And that company also owns Pinduoduo, which was removed from the Google Play store for containing malware.

Temu on the App Store is displayed on a phone screen. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

As you shop, Temu can:

• Monitor activity on other apps
• Track your notifications
• Reads private messages
• Change settings

Depending on what you enable, it gets full access to all your contacts, calendars and photo albums, plus your social media accounts, chats and texts. 

Do this now

It’s up to you, of course, what apps to keep on your phone. You may feel comfortable simply limiting permissions. But you may want to go a step further.

AI EXPERT: CHATGPT PROMPTS YOU’LL WISH YOU KNEW SOONER

Delete apps from your Android phone:

• Long-press an app, then tap App Info > Uninstall.
• Go to Settings > Apps & Notifications to see a list of your apps and delete them the same way.
• Or open the Google Play Store app and navigate to Menu > My apps & games. Tap on the app and hit Uninstall.
• NOTE: Samsung and OnePlus phones have an Uninstall option under the app shortcuts menu.

Delete apps from your iPhone

• Touch and hold an app, then tap Remove App > Delete App > Delete.
• Or use the App Library to get a curated list of your apps grouped by category. Swipe past the last page of your Home screen to access it. Tap and hold the app, then select Delete App > Delete.

A man holds an iPhone in his hand. (Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images)

But Kim, I must scroll TikTok …

… Or some other app on my list above. There is a safe-ish way to do it, at least where all the data from your real phone isn’t going who-knows-where:

• Install TikTok on an old device that’s no longer connected to your email, banking info or anything else.

If you can, keep it off your home’s Wi-Fi network and buy a cheap data plan. Otherwise, be sure to use the guest network. And now ask yourself if those videos, photo editing tools and cheap goods are really worth all the trouble.

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The Department of Justice is suing TikTok for allegedly letting kids under 13 make accounts without their parents’ permission and collecting “extensive data” on them, in violation of US child privacy law.

The DOJ claims that TikTok knowingly let kids onto its platform through its “Kids Mode,” collected their information, and failed to delete their accounts at their parents’ requests, in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). When a kid under 13 entered their age on the app, they’d be prompted to enter a username, which doesn’t contain personal information, and it would create a Kids Mode account for the user. But the app wouldn’t notify parents or get their consent. Kids can’t upload videos in that mode, but they can view videos; the DOJ alleges that TikTok collected some personal information on them as part of this process, like unique device identifiers and IP addresses.

The lawsuit alleges that TikTok’s age-gating techniques “are deficient in multiple ways.” Under an earlier practice, TikTok would let users restart the account creation process even if they’d originally entered a birthday showing they’re under 13, according to the complaint. TikTok also used to let users log in through Instagram or Google, which would categorize the accounts as “age unknown,” the DOJ alleges.

The DOJ says TikTok has let millions of kids use its platform but said it’s hard to pin down the exact scale of its violations because it didn’t comply with a requirement from a 2019 injunction to keep records on its COPPA compliance. The DOJ is asking the court to prevent TikTok from violating COPPA in the future and pay civil penalties for each violation. Under the FTC Act, civil penalties can go up to $51,744 per violation, per day.

The Federal Trade Commission took credit for its investigation leading to the complaint. The agency announced in June that it had referred a complaint against TikTok to the DOJ after an investigation of potential violations under the FTC Act and COPPA. At the time, the FTC said it had “uncovered reason to believe” TikTok was “violating or are about to violate the law.”

TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said in a statement that the company disagrees with the DOJ’s claims, “many of which relate to past events and practices that are factually inaccurate or have been addressed. We are proud of our efforts to protect children, and we will continue to update and improve the platform. To that end, we offer age-appropriate experiences with stringent safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users, and have voluntarily launched features such as default screentime limits, Family Pairing, and additional privacy protections for minors.”

Several weeks after being targeted with copyright infringement lawsuits, AI music startups Suno and Udio have now accused the record labels that filed them of attempting to stifle competition within the music industry. Both companies admitted to training their music-generating AI models on copyrighted materials in separate legal filings, arguing that doing so is lawful under fair-use doctrine.

The lawsuits against Suno and Udio were raised in June by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a group representing major record labels like Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Records. Both cases accuse Suno and Udio of committing “copyright infringement involving unlicensed copying of sound recordings on a massive scale.” The RIAA is seeking damages of up to $150,000 for every work infringed.

Udio’s and Suno’s AI music generation tools allow users to produce songs by typing in written descriptions. According to the RIAA, some of these tracks contain vocals that sound identical to those by famous artists like Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, and ABBA. In May, Suno said that its music generator had been used 12 million times since it was rolled out in December 2023.

In their responses, both Suno and Udio say the lawsuits highlight the music industry’s opposition to competition. “Helping people generate new artistic expression is what copyright law is designed to encourage, not prohibit,” Udio wrote in its filing. “Under longstanding doctrine, what Udio has done — use existing sound recordings as data to mine and analyze for the purpose of identifying patterns in the sounds of various musical styles, all to enable people to make their own new creations — is a quintessential ‘fair use’ under copyright law.”

In a blog post accompanying its own filing, Suno said that major record labels had misconceptions about how its AI music tools work, likening its model training to “a kid learning to write new rock songs by listening religiously to rock music” as opposed to just copying and repeating copyrighted tracks. Suno also admitted to training its model on online music, noting that other AI providers like OpenAI, Google, and Apple also source their training data from the open internet.

“Much of the open internet indeed contains copyrighted materials, and some of it is owned by major record labels,” Suno said in the blog. ”Learning is not infringing. It never has been, and it is not now.”

In a statement to Music Ally responding to Suno’s and Udio’s filings, the RIAA said that the companies failed to obtain appropriate consent to use copyrighted works before bringing their tools to market, unlike competing services like YouTube. “There’s nothing fair about stealing an artist’s life’s work, extracting its core value, and repackaging it to compete directly with the originals,” said the RIAA. “Their vision of the ‘future of music’ is apparently one in which fans will no longer enjoy music by their favorite artists because those artists can no longer earn a living.”