Web-tracking codes made by ByteDance, the parent company of the popular social media application TikTok, have been found on more than two dozen US state government websites, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st March, 2023) Web-tracking codes made by ByteDance, the parent company of the popular social media application TikTok, have been found on more than two dozen US state government websites, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
A Feroot Security review of the websites of more than 3500 organizations government entities found that tracking pixels made by ByteDance were present in state government websites of 27 US states.
TikTok pixels can be watching and recording you when you're renewing your driver's license, paying your taxes or filling out doctors' forms, the report quoted Feroot Security CEO Ivan Tsarynny as saying.
The trackers were placed by website administrators to measure the effectiveness of purchased advertising on TikTok, helping agencies determine how many individuals who saw advertisements on the application then visited a website or signed up for a service, the report said.
Any social media platform, data broker or advertising service that is using tracking pixels to monitor people's browsing across the web is violating the privacy of users visiting those websites, the report said.
Most troubling, individuals are being tracked on government websites even as they try to access information and services that are essential, EPIC Executive Director Alan Butler was quoted as saying in the report.
Tracking pixels are usually created by social media platforms or advertising companies and are ubiquitous on commercial websites, the report said.
The free bits of software code are designed to support digital marketing and advertising by logging a visitor's interactions with the site, such as what is clicked on and the duration of a visit, the report also said.
Though created to bolster and better-direct advertising, the tracking pixels have been criticized by security experts for the threats they pose to society because their malleability in configuration makes them an easy method for collecting sensitive data users enter on websites they visit, the report added.
The more pixels a company has on websites, the better trackers can build detailed profiles of individual web users' habits, according to the report.
The report comes just days before TikTok's CEO Shou Chew is expected to appear before a Congressional committee to defend the application's fate in the United States given that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are considering imposing a nation-wide ban.
