It was at this year’s Apple WWDC that the company had announced its latest OS for Apple iPhones, iOS14. The Cupertino giant released a beta version of the OS for testing and it was found that TikTok was recording whatever users were typing on their keyboard due to a glitch.
The information could be anything from personal texts to passwords.
Soon after the issue was spotted by Apple, the company released a security patch that stopped TikTok from having access to the clipboard from where it was able to copy texts.
The real issue was with the iOS clipboard tool where it helps users copy texts or images and paste them on other applications. It can also be used to copy texts and images from an iPhone to another Apple device.
However, due to a design flaw in the Apple clipboard tool, an app was able to record all the text and images that were copied using the clipboard. What’s worrying is that all of this was happening without the user’s consent.
“For TikTok, this was triggered by a feature designed to identify repetitive, spammy behaviour. We have already submitted an updated version of the app to the App Store removing the anti-spam feature to eliminate any potential confusion,” the Chinese company said in a statement.
According to The Telegraph report, other apps like Accu Weather, Call of Duty Mobile and even Google News can read texts from the iOS clipboard.
Although TikTok has said that the issue has been fixed on iOS, we still do not know whether it persists on the Android ecosystem.
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