6 On Your Side: Consumer Confidence, Protect Your Privacy on Tik Tok
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(ABC 6 News) – It’s one of the hottest apps on millions of phones; TikTok’s videos are seen around the world, and users can’t seem to get enough of it.
But what personal information are you sharing with TikTok, and how can you protect yourself online? Consumer Reports shows you the TikTok privacy settings you should adjust right now.
Whether you’re new to TikTok or you’ve been watching videos for years—Consumer Reports says it might be time to think about adjusting the app’s default privacy settings.
Start with who can see your profile.
“Setting your whole TikTok account to private is a great way to get a little bit more control over who can see the stuff on your profile,” says Thomas Germain, Consumer Reports.
Over the past few years, Tik Tok has gone from being a niche platform for memes and dances to one of the world's most popular apps. But is your private information safe?
While TikTok is a social media company—it makes its money through advertising, just like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
“Something that’s really valuable for tech companies is building out a huge network of everyone that you know—your friends, your family, your coworkers,” says Germain. “And they present it as a way for you to find your acquaintances on TikTok, which can be great, but it also gives the tech companies a lot of information about you and you might not want to do that.”
To make sure the app doesn’t have access to your contacts or Facebook friends, toggle those settings off.
Just above that setting, you can tell TikTok not to suggest your account to your contacts, Facebook friends, and others—that is, if you’re not interested in having followers on the platform.
TikTok and other companies use more than just information about your friends and family for their targeted ad campaigns.
“You might not realize it but TikTok has code spread all over the internet on websites and apps to collect data about things you do when you’re not on TikTok,” says Germain. “Now there’s nothing you can do to stop that entirely but you can use a setting to control whether TikTok can use that data for targeted ads. and that’s a good idea to protect your privacy.”
To protect yourself from hackers—not only on TikTok—but on other apps as well, CR says one of the most important things you can do is set up multi-factor authentication. Germain explains, “that’s that thing where they send you a code, right, through a text or an email. so you need not only your password but also access to your phone or your email account to get in.”
It’s that extra layer of security that does a lot to keep the bad guys out. CR also says, although these settings will help, you can never expect total privacy when using social media.