What a joke!
Has anyone actually looked at the technical breakdown/decompilation of the TikTok app?
Yes, it slurps data but it is actually one of more "tame" Android apps I've ever seen.
Meanwhile, Android apps that have been proven to be malicious and whos developers have ties to the Chinese state not only get a pass, they are flourishing on the Google Play store.
Google of course knows all about this and quietly removes these apps only after multiple complaints but then allows these same developers and their apps back on the Play Store within a few weeks after getting a slap on the wrist.
So, it appears to me that banning Huawei and TikTok without any evidence of wrongdoing while at the same time continuing to allow TCL/Alcatel to push devices with known malware unabated seems to be just a political stunt and/or trade bullying.
I'm looking at an app now that was created by TCL's Shenzhen Hawk group that uses a shared library to run Facebook and Google related apps inside a virtual onclave that steals the users authentication tokens to use Google sync to capture the users contacts and installed apps, run advertising fraud with Facebook ads hidden from the user and harvests the users credit card data and session cookies from WebView and stores it in an SQLite data base before sending the data off encryted with AES. Yet TikTok is the problem?
Give me a break.
https://www.gadgetguy.com.au/tcl-and-alcatel-direct-links-to-massive-spyware-operation/
https://vpnpro.com/blog/chinese-company-secretly-behind-popular-apps-seeking-dangerous-permissions/
As a side note, Mark Zuckerberg, through his "trusted partners" program, allowed TCL/Alcatel to have low-level access to users social media data regardless of any "privacy" settings the user may have set:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/technology/facebook-device-partnerships-china.html
So when America's infrastructure is taken down by a massive DDoS from a million+ strong botnet of cheap Android-based tat and we are all siiting in our re-education camps wondering "WTF just happened?" you can thank Google and Facebook for selling us out for an advertising dollar, not because your kid watches short video clips on TikTok.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
