Monica Eaton on How to Make TikTok Safer
Monica Eaton, Co-Founder and COO of Chargebacks911®, was recently quoted by media giant Business Insider, in a piece regarding the safety of social media apps like TikTok.
Business Insider is a fast-growing business site with deep financial, media, tech, and other industry verticals. Launched in 2007 by former top-ranked Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget and DoubleClick executives Dwight Merriman and Kevin Ryan, the site is now the largest business news site on the web. Business Insider was acquired by German media company Axel Springer SE in September, 2015.
The article begins by cautioning that social apps like Facebook and TikTok gather a lot of information about users, whether they like it or not. TikTok's Privacy Policy clearly states that the platform does collect information about its users, including usage, device, location, metadata and cookies.
TikTok assures users that this information is not shared with third parties. However, it is still shared with “trusted partners,” including advertisers who use that information to target users. And it isn’t just your scrolling habits that TikTok is monitoring. The app also stores and shares information from private messages.
But, despite the gray area, many industry experts suggest that TikTok is still one of the least concerning of the social media apps out there, in terms of personal security. “Of all the serious cyber risks facing the average consumer, TikTok isn't on the top of the list,” Monica says. “Most Americans ought to be way more concerned about credit card fraud and password protection than TikTok.”
