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1

cemyl95 t1_j1bzh2p wrote

I'd just like to point out that an IP address can only tell you what city a user is in. Plus geodata for residential IPs is often inaccurate as it usually shows the city of your ISPs POP that your internet line is uplinked to, which can sometimes be several cities away (or even in a different state if you live on a state border).

Still shitty what TikTok is doing, just wanted to point out that the article title is misleading, probably to get a bigger "OMG" response. You can't get someone's physical address or GPS coordinates from their public IP, that's just not how the internet works.

23

Theblackroze t1_j1c45fm wrote

Replying to n3w4cc01_1nt (#1,017,927)

Yo! I thought it wasn’t public knowledge about black cube. NSO is on some top grade stuff. That hacking of devices with a simple sending of a message that doesn’t even require it to be read or opened. Insanity!!!

19

neuronexmachina t1_j1ccq4v wrote

Replying to cemyl95 (#1,018,161)

IP addresses could definitely be used to figure out if a journalist was connected to the same wifi network as a ByteDance employee, though:

>An internal investigation by ByteDance, the parent company of video-sharing platform TikTok, found that employees tracked multiple journalists covering the company, improperly gaining access to their IP addresses and user data in an attempt to identify whether they had been in the same locales as ByteDance employees.

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cemyl95 t1_j1cdphp wrote

Replying to neuronexmachina (#1,019,300)

"comparing public IP for a bytedance employee with a journalist's IP" and "spying on a user's physical location using their IP" are not the same. And unless they're connected to someone's home network, it doesn't actually tell them where they were physically located, as the title implies, rather just that they were (maybe) in the same building as a bytedance employee. Even that's hit or miss though because multiple distinct locations could be sharing the same public IP.

As an example: journalist and employee stay at two different locations of the same hotel chain. Depending on how the chain's network is configured, they could both be uplinked to the chain's local data center and have the same public IP, even though they're at different locations.

The point I'm trying to make here is, when you're dealing with enterprise networking, you can't just say "same IP = same location".

−1

nicuramar t1_j1d1ha1 wrote

Misleading headline. ByteDance didn't confirm that "it" did this, but rather than some now fired employees did.

5

tomistruth t1_j1d5or3 wrote

Tiktok's majority shares are owned by the Chinese military. Enough said. It is not a social network, but an intelligence platform.

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neuronexmachina t1_j1d7w1y wrote

Replying to cemyl95 (#1,019,383)

I assume the goal was to narrow down the list of potential leakers, which IP addresses would be useful for. Regarding your hotel chain example, they could just perform a reverse lookup to see it's an IP belonging to a hotel chain, and weight the information accordingly along with other information they have about their employees.

Also, the article doesn't mention this, but checking the Google Play Store and Apple App Store entries for TikTok, it looks like location data is part of what the app has access to.

4

poulbrown t1_j1dd46m wrote

who could have seen this happening

24

i_can_has_rock t1_j1dmz9e wrote

when this thing first came out there were a few posts floating around where people decompiled this thing, listed all the blatant security abuses and.... got ignored...

5

11fingerfreak t1_j1dymxw wrote

Who would’ve thought that an app designed to train China’s facial recognition systems and spy on people would ever be used to spy on people? What a surprise that nobody ever saw coming?

41

Iyellkhan t1_j1e3ftt wrote

Either the US division's leadership are working for the FBI, or they're at serious risk of espionage charges

1

nicuramar t1_j1e792g wrote

Replying to BloodyAlbanian (#1,024,848)

Yes, that’s always possible, although I’d say that exploits this serious (zero interaction) are quite rare. One click exploits are already much less powerful for targeted attacks, although can work pretty well for broad attacks.

2

EtadanikM t1_j1e7nce wrote

Replying to Witty-Village-2503 (#1,021,769)

I mean, Tik Tok IS being targeted because it's Chinese. We're NOT trying to be "objective" here. The US has determined that China is an enemy state and so its social media platforms cannot be allowed to access American data due to intelligence risks.

That IS what is happening. No one is denying it.

Uber, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are American so it's fine.

12

Chaos_Ribbon t1_j1eb4o1 wrote

Replying to EtadanikM (#1,025,372)

But let's be realistic here... it's not fine. And TikTok is being used as a scapegoat to pull media attention away from every other social media that does the exact same thing.

Rather than fix the underlying problem across the board, US politics are only focusing on the one they can't manipulate themselves.

4

Entire_Ganache1100 t1_j1egch9 wrote

I think the writing is on the wall. TikTok is going to be banned by the USA in the not so distant future. May want to consider investing in the other devil Meta as it will benefit….

8

KingRBPII t1_j1ek37y wrote

Everyone has scarified their privacy online. It’s so easy for a consumer to not even think about this.

1

ultradianfreq t1_j1ersbl wrote

This is like inviting a convicted Chinese spy into your home, openly discussing secrets and then claiming you were spied on. You don’t say?

1

littleMAS t1_j1ey5to wrote

Have you ever noticed how a company 'never does anything wrong' while their employees seem to frequently do 'regrettable actions' (as described by other company employees)?

1

nanoatzin t1_j1f2wuu wrote

Kevin McCarthy voted to convert this into not a crime in 2017.

> House Votes To Allow Internet Service Providers To Sell, Share Your Personal Information

TikTok has flagrantly been caught doing doing the exact same thing as Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, LinkedIn, Google, …

Telegram is the company that is owned by a citizen of a foreign enemy, so why aren’t we doing that one too?

Kevin McCarthy will probably be back in charge in about 3 weeks, so maybe write him a letter asking him to change his mind?

3

OriginsOfSymmetry t1_j1fbybu wrote

Just totally ignoring the fact that the US wants to ban TikTok instead of introducing things to actually protect your privacy so they can still spy on you themselves.

1

MontanaHikingResearc t1_j1ff1lt wrote

To repeat the journalists’ mantra,

“____ is a private company. It can do whatever it wants.”

1

The3rdRepublic t1_j1jtk20 wrote

Can't we force them to sell the American division to American somehow

1