The president of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC, its acronym in English) of the United States, Brendan Carr, asked that Apple and Alphabet, owner of Google, remove the TikTok from your app stores.
Carr shared on Tuesday via Twitter a letter to the CEO of Apple Tim Cook, and the CEO of Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, where he pointed out reports and other developments that make the TikTok not compliant with the two companies' app store policies.
TikTok is not what it seems on the surface. It's not just an app to share funny videos or memes. This is the sheep's clothing, wrote Carr in the letter.
In the letter and on the social network, Carr declares that TikTok “not only sees its users’ dance videos”, but also “collects search and browsing histories, keystroke patterns, biometric identifiers, message drafts and metadata, in addition to collecting stored text, images and videos on a device's clipboard".
BUT: TikTok informs that it does not send user data to China
This story, however, is not new. Still in the government of former US President Donald Trump, many concerns about American data being stored in China would have been brought to the forefront to the point of trying to ban the app in the country.
As a condition of operation, Trump asked for the participation of American companies in TikTok's activities, which the Chinese company was reluctant to accept. The attempt ended up not coming to fruition and the order was revoked shortly afterwards by Joe Biden.
The popular short video app is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, accused of spying by the US government during the presidency of Donald Trump. Alphabet, Apple and TikTok declined to comment on the FCC's request.
