Chinese-owned video app TikTok could be covertly sending users’ passwords, credit card numbers, and other sensitive data to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to one expert.
“When you’re actually doing keystrokes, typing each letter, each number, those are being recorded back in China, and under supervision of the Chinese Communist Party,” Casey Fleming, CEO of advisory firm BlackOps Partners, said during an Aug. 25 interview with “China in Focus” on NTD, a sister media outlet of The Epoch Times.
“What you’re texting, who you’re texting, passwords, email accounts, everything on your phone, anything that you’re typing in emails or texting, that keylogging is recording each word, each password, and so on.”
The comments come just a week after it was revealed that TikTok’s browser contained code for conducting keylogging, meaning that the app can record all of a user’s keystrokes on the device he or she is using, including in email and on websites.
Fleming described TikTok as an “espionage application” and said it’s being used to systematically harvest the personal information of Americans, particularly the young.
“People need to understand that TikTok is a weaponized military application in the hands of our middle schoolers, our kids, our high school kids, and our young adults,” Fleming said.
He added that the app is likely being used as part of the CCP’s strategy of “hybrid war,” in which the regime seeks to achieve military objectives through nonmilitary means.
To that end, he said, the app is being used to steal intellectual property, spread pro-CCP propaganda, and obtain information on Americans to be later used for blackmail.
Read More: TikTok Is a ‘Weaponized Military Application’: Expert
