Are TikTok and Musical.ly “dangerous apps” that leak personal data? Fact Check

ByCraig Haley

A message spreading across social media warns that the TikTok social app is giving away the personal information of its users and is a “dangerous app”.

FALSE

The warning also implores readers to ensure their children delete the app. An example of the warning as it appears on Facebook can be seen below.

If your child has MUSICALLY/TIK TOK, make them delete it now!!! Friday night our daughter got a text from a Pennsylvania number. They knew her name, age, where she lived and her email. We took her phone to Verizon and they said it was the most dangerous app. Even with her account being set to private, they can still access all of her information.

TikTok, which merged with Musical.ly in 2017 after the latter’s acquisition by Chinese based company ByteDance, is a social media app that allows users to film short videos (no longer than 15 seconds) and upload them. Other users can “reply” or “duet” with these videos, and can embellish their videos using a vast database of sound and visual effects. The video app has an estimated 800 million users around the globe, though is not available in China.

However, despite the warning, there is no evidence to suggest that the TikTok gives away personal contact information of its users to strangers, nor is there any reason to believe that the app is unusually dangerous to younger users (outside of the always present dangers associated with using social media apps.)

The privacy settings of TikTok are – for the most part – similar to most types of social apps of this kind. A user will enter some basic information, such as an email address or phone number to register for an account, along with their date of birth (required because it is an age restricted app) and a password of the user’s choosing. However, this information is not shared with other TikTok users (unless a user chooses to share it by, for example, including it on their biography section.)


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A user account is public by default, meaning others can see what that user posts and the account can receive messages from anyone, and also have anyone follow the user. However an account can easily be changed to private, meaning the content the user posts is restricted to only the accounts the user chooses, and only those accounts can message the user. Additionally, the TikTok app requests access to the location data of the user, but this can be turned off. The main TikTok app is for over-13s only. Under 13s can use a restricted version of the app that collects less personal data and doesn’t share content with other users.

That’s all pretty standard stuff for a mobile app of this ilk, and from what we’ve been able to determine, there is no feature or glaring privacy vulnerability that would allow any TikTok user to glean the name, age, address and email address of another user, as claimed in the warning message above. While TikTok users have the ability to share information with other users, by using the videos they upload, using their public bio or by messaging followers, in no instance will TikTok users be automatically sharing their personal information such as their phone number, age or email address, regardless of their privacy settings. Unless they choose to share this information in their bio, or by direct message or include it (intentionally or inadvertently) in a video, this information stays private.

While we wouldn’t necessarily jump to the conclusion that the story in the warning above is entirely false, there is no evidence to suggest that TikTok’s privacy or security settings were to blame. There are variety of ways the person in the story could have winded up receiving a text message from an unknown number.


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Of course it is possible that privacy issues can arise when using TikTok or indeed any other social type of app. Users can compromise their own security in a variety of different ways, such as through oversharing, ignoring important privacy settings or falling for online scams.

This is why it’s important to monitor children as they use apps like these. Since such apps are inherently designed to share information and connect users, they could potentially be exposed to inappropriate content such as pornography (despite being banned there are numerous reports of this.)

Additionally it’s not outside the realms of possibility that predators or criminals may use the popular social app to contact children, such as this report from 2016 where an adult allegedly posed as a boy in order to send sexually suggestive messages to an 8 year old girl.

As such, parents of children using the app should take care when allowing this kids to use it in much the same way they would when allowing them to use sites and apps like Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat. Additionally, the TikTok app is clearly not suitable for children under 13 years of age.

But as we stated above, TikTok is pretty standard stuff in terms of privacy and security. The issues raised above are applicable to any social app when used by children. There is nothing overtly dangerous about TikTok in particular, and as such we rank the claim false.