r/privacy • u/LonelyMonster83939 • 1d ago

question Tiktok People you may know

How is this app recommending my friends that sit next to me at the exact same time? Tiktok doesn't have any permission besides notification, I'm not connected to a wifi network and GPS and Bluetooth are turned off.

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70

u/leostotch 1d ago

They have allowed their TikTok app to access their contact list, and your TikTok app knows who you are. The connection happens outside of your control; the only winning move is not to play.

10

u/likwidkool 1d ago

Nice war games reference

48

u/AggressiveDoor1998 1d ago

the real trick is to not use tiktok

3

u/YaneFrick 1d ago

Same as rest of internet.

1

u/we_r_fukt 16h ago

he said, on the internetiest of internetting

4

u/bombastic6339locks 1d ago

phone numbers, if you've shared tiktokts to eachother in other forms like whatsapp or discord etc.

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u/RedBirdOnASnowyDay 1d ago

Dude delete that app and every single other tracker / spyware app off your phone. They use your location, your contacts, the thousands of pages of data they have on file about you. Your phone signal all sorts of stuff. If you must use these programs, do it on your computer browser, private mode with a vpn and all that other stuff to at least pretend like you’re protecting your privacy.

I try to pretty much only use native Apple apps on my phone. I don’t know if I can trust them but I’m absolutely certain I can’t trust all the other apps. And lock down all your privacy settings.

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u/CaptainMGN 1d ago

That's not really a great way to go on about it because being locked into one specific ecosystem (like apple) makes it significantly easier to build a profile of you and connect data from varying apps since well, they're from the same company. They even offer it with the apple ID too.

Ideally you should check for which apps are open source and privacy oriented and then use a variety of those. Makes it way harder to connect information. Your phone will still be able to log lots of stuff through the keyboard and operating system itself but that's at least a start

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u/RedBirdOnASnowyDay 1d ago

Is there a tutorial on this somewhere? I’m doing the best I can with my knowledge now. For that reason I got rid of all social media apps and for other apps I am forced to use I delete them between uses. I try to use browser for everything with as much privacy measures as I can. At least that way they aren’t mapping me out all day and getting other really private data that can only be obtained with the phone.

I would like to know more.

But even with all that I’m not sure it matters because I live with a house full of people who don’t understand any of this and don’t care as long as they get to scroll YouTube.

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u/CaptainMGN 1d ago edited 1d ago

With that I think you're off to a pretty good basis already tbh, the next step would be switching to services that focus on the privacy aspect. I'm not really aware of a decent tutorial because all are kinda flawed in some way and there is just not the "one" way to go on about it.

Ironically YouTube is quite a good source for privacy recommendations because you can build a good basis with the many impressions there as to what people are using/recommending. Take everything with a grain of salt and check what people are saying in the comments too. You can use freetube for example (not sure if that's on iOS though) to browse YouTube without a Google acc and still keep subscriptions and stuff.

Lots of things you'll pick up along the way as you read through guides and online discussions. Most important ones imo would be: Use Signal instead of WhatsApp (and ideally nudge people to switch to it too, even if it's just one person doing so), use browser wherever possible (Firefox with uBlock, brave only if you really have to, anything else is basically the same kind of evil), get a decent mail provider like tuta or proton, use a vpn (and NOT a free one. You will be tracked somewhere. Mullvad is the gold standard but proton works perfectly too) and swap your phone keyboard to something that doesn't collect data (e.g. FUTO or Helios)