Security researcher Tommy Mysk says on site Ars Technica, it would be no less than 53 applications running on iOS that would collect data via users’ clipboard. With iOS 14, the interception of the clipboard by an application is now detected as ” repetitive spam behavior ” Thus, thanks to these notifications, the user will now be informed and this will not go unnoticed. However, it will not have a lot of means to counter these intrusions except that of purely and simply deleting the application.
The clipboard contains a wealth of information. This is the RAM space on your smartphone that contains the items you need to copy / paste. It goes from the simple message that we want to save to the URLs that we want to share. Some photos can also be stored there. The last recorded data overwrites the previous ones.
Among the applications that have been identified, here are a few: Bejeweled, Fruit Ninja, PUBG Mobile, Viber, Weibo, Zoosk, AccuWeather, DAZN and Overstock. Some developers have indicated that they want to change their policy. Alongside TikTok we find in particular 10% Happier and Hotel Tonight who are committed to reducing their use of the clipboard.
However for certain applications the fact of copying this data is justified. We are thinking in particular of Pixelmator which only copies the clipboard when it contains an image or Pocket whose service offers in particular to generate an archive when the app is opened with a URL already present in the clipboard.
Behavior difficult to measure on devices running Android
It is possible that other applications not listed have similar behavior. In addition, it is difficult to know the number of applications which would have a similar functioning and which would function on Android. Indeed, the anti-spam function that triggered alerts with the iOS version of TikTok is not present on Android. But for the most part, this data collection is difficult to understand.
Here’s what the social network said in the Telegraph newspaper: ” After the beta version of iOS 14 was released on June 22, users saw notifications while using a number of popular apps. For TikTok, this was triggered by a function designed to identify repetitive spam behavior. We have already submitted an updated version of the app to the App Store by removing the anti-spam feature to eliminate any potential confusion. TikTok is committed to protecting the privacy of users and to being transparent about the operation of our application. »
In this declaration, at no time is it specified which policy will be adopted for the Android system. In any case and whatever your device, it is best to avoid copying sensitive data with the clipboard and in case it is necessary to do so, it is strongly advised to empty it once the operation performed.
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