iOS14 Catches Apps Spying on Your Clipboard
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as evidence that many mainstream apps, not just TikTok, were snooping on clipboard contents.
What it is
A one-minute demonstration of iOS 14's new paste notification, which revealed popular apps silently reading the clipboard each time they were opened. It credits the mysk research write-up.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2020 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Cites SirensOfTitan · 2020-06 · on “iOS14 reveals that TikTok may snoop clipboard contents every few keystrokes”
It seems like a ton of apps are abusing this feature: [this video] I categorize this as another reason why "just trust us," just isn't acceptable enough when it comes to data privacy and ownership. Companies just cannot be trusted to treat their users' data with respect given the option of: profit or privacy. (sourced from reddit: [LINK] )
Cites mrtksn · 2020-06 · on “iOS14 reveals that TikTok may snoop clipboard contents every few keystrokes”
>It seems like a ton of apps are abusing this feature: [this video] Okay, this could be simply a dynamic link library checking for a deep link in the clipboard. Why do this? To preserve the state after install. Firebase does it. When you click on a deep link but you don't have the app installed, the webpage would copy the url to clipboard and open the App Store, after you install the app and open it Firebase would check the clipboard and take you to the the correct screen. The apps in the video don't need to be malicious, they simply could be checking if there's a deep link in the clipboard to restore user session. Of course, with iOS 14 the best practice would be to do this only once after the i
Cites Shank · 2020-06 · on “TikTok app to stop accessing user clipboards after being caught in the act”
> Already forced the family to uninstall it and its gone forever. Honestly you’d be better off educating them and telling them it’s a good idea than forcing them to jettison an app they probably love. Tons of apps do this (as discovered in iOS 14) and I highly suggest not doing a crusade against one when a lot more do it. See: [this video]
Cites zkid18 · 2020-06 · on “TikTok app to stop accessing user clipboards after being caught in the act”
Great to see another layer of transparency in ios14. Bit I wonder why everyone talking about one specific app? I see a huge bias towards TikTok in headlines "iOS 14 caught TikTok and other apps spying on the clipboard" [0] "iOS 14 beta shows apps like TikTok still spy on your iPhone" [1] There a bunch of apps like VICE, Google News, WSJ that has been caught doing exactly the same. [2] I may find the explanation why TikTok did that. In China WeChat blocks direct links to their competitors. So apps like Taobao or Douyin have to find a workaround for deeplinks. When you want to share the video from Douyin with a friend in WeChat, Douyin generates the following message. 在东京刚毕业入职三个月的职场小白 搬家找房 坚持更
Cites ourcat · 2020-07 · on “LinkedIn is copying the contents of my clipboard on every keystroke”
When I saw this video of a lot more apps doing it, I did wonder if it actually might be a commonly used third-party library causing this. It's certainly possible. [this video]
Cites xster · 2020-07 · on “Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’”
[this video] Here's a rundown of just general apps that would be on everyone's home screens doing the same thing.
Cites xster · 2020-12 · on “U.S. Judge Halts TikTok Ban”
It was "caught" because that's the only one the consent manufacturers reported on. [this video] Most of the apps in your home screen did it when the beta came out from NYTimes to Google News to Chrome to AccuWeather etc. TikTok shows a pop-up preview of the TikTok link you have in your clipboard when you open TikTok. It might be that, it might be more. But it's certainly not more special than other apps.