If you use social media, you have probably heard about the potential ban of popular apps TikTok and WeChat. And while the bans have once again been temporarily postponed, there are concerns you may want to consider when communicating through these apps.
Both TikTok and WeChat are two popular apps owned by China-based companies. The Trump administration has expressed concerns over what these companies are doing with user data.
In a press release, the U.S. Department of Commerce said that The Chinese Communist Party “has demonstrated the means and motives to use these apps to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and the economy of the U.S.” The Department also explained that each app collects a variety of data from users including network activity, location data and browsing and searching histories.
Internet and online privacy are a basic human right everyone should be entitled to. If we didn’t have laws or restrictions around internet privacy then everything including your credit card information, medical history, and bank accounts would be available for everyone to see.
TMany social media apps often track your browsing history and can sell the data to advertisers and other third party users.
Additionally, most messaging platforms and applications use a centralized server that shares and saves your information. Other apps often pass through multiple servers and can be copied up to 32 times. This can allow these apps to sell or share your private information to advertisers to target you for advertising.
Have you ever chatted with a friend online about a new product and then started seeing advertisements for that product later? That’s a perfect example of how social media apps are using your data.
The good news is that there are plenty of steps you can take to protect yourself online. In addition to paying attention to things like terms and conditions as well as your social media settings, there are additional layers of protection to communicate more privately online.
ShazzleChat brings the power of Peer to Peer technology combined with end to end encryption to your online communications with our patented technology. The app creates a peer to peer network to prevent your messages from being stored and shared on server by encrypting and breaking your messages into pieces, making it nearly impossible to hack.