Growing Privacy Concerns Over Tik Tok – takeaways for retailers
TikTok is an app with a cult following rivalling giants such as YouTube and Instagram, which essentially encourages users to create and share short videos – often dance challenges and social commentary.
There has been longstanding unease about the privacy concerns associated with the huge amounts of data that is accumulating via TikTok, however more recently the Australian government and other world leaders have expressed concerns around the connection between the Chinese Communist Party and the app. In fact, India has banned the use of TikTok and there is possibility that Australia will follow suit.
At the heart of the concern is the invasive way in which personal data is collected by TikTok – but is it really that invasive? What is collected by the app appears to be not more invasive than what is typically collected on any given social media site or app, such as date of birth, email address, phone numbers, technical information about the user device. These terms are commonly found in a standard Privacy Policy and are likely found on many of the apps on your phone right now.
We at Gladwin Legal are interested to see what precautionary measures will be taken by Australia to protect user data. In the meantime, this might be a good time for you as a business to:
- Check and update your privacy policies to include circumstances that may have arisen as a result of COVID-19;
- Create refreshers to employees on best practices to manage privacy policies (see our previous guidelines which address this here); and
- Securely destroy or de identify personal information if it’s no longer needed for a legal purpose.
More questions?
If you have any other issues or questions in relation to the COVID-19 situation or about updating your privacy policy, you are welcome to get in touch or book an initial consultation with us www.gladwinlegal.10to8.com