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TikTok Trackers Embedded in U.S. State-Government Websites, Review Finds (livemint.com) 46

Toronto-based Feroot Security "found that so-called tracking pixels from the TikTok parent company were present in 30 U.S. state-government websites across 27 states," reports the Wall Street Journal, "including some where the app has been banned from state networks and devices." The review was performed in January and February. The presence of that code means that U.S. state governments around the country are inadvertently participating in a data-collection effort for a foreign-owned company, one that senior Biden administration officials and lawmakers of both parties have said could be harmful to U.S. national security and the privacy of Americans.

Administrators who manage government websites use such pixels to help measure the effectiveness of advertising they have purchased on TikTok.... The presence of the TikTok tracking code on government websites underlines the challenge for those who deem the China-owned app a potential data-security threat. Lawmakers in both parties are considering a nationwide ban, but simply uprooting the app from U.S. smartphones wouldn't stop all data-tracking activities....

Feroot found that the average website it studied had more than 13 embedded pixels. Google's were far and away the most common, with 92% of websites examined having some sort of Google tracking pixel embedded. About 50% of the websites the firm examined had Microsoft Corp. or Facebook pixels. TikTok had a presence in less than 10% of sites examined.

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TikTok Trackers Embedded in U.S. State-Government Websites, Review Finds

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  • Iâ(TM)ve been finding TikTok trackers in iOS apps for a long time. Apps that have nothing to do with TikTok, and Iâ(TM)m not entirely sure what the devs are getting from it. Other than simple metrics.

    • I don't have a facebook account and yet I still find loads of facebook trackers also! A plague on both your houses - America and China!
    • by arQon ( 447508 )

      Iâ(TM)m not entirely sure what the devs are getting from it.

      erm... money, obviously.

      To get back on topic though: these "state" websites are nearly all churned out by the same 2 or 3 companies (Tyler etc). They aren't developed by they states themselves, they're bought in from whichever commercial provider won the contract.

      Even with the skill level of the average web developer these days, with every site being glued together from three frameworks each with multiple external dependencies and zero effort given to even basic security, the "inadvertent" claim might argua

    • Iâ(TM)ve been finding TikTok trackers in iOS apps for a long time. Apps that have nothing to do with TikTok, and Iâ(TM)m not entirely sure what the devs are getting from it. Other than simple metrics.

      Most likely the devs are using some 3rd party library that lets them show ads. Such 3rd party libraries have caused apps to be dropped from the App Store in the past when found to be doing something unreasonable.

  • Is it just me (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday March 25, 2023 @12:51PM (#63398757) Homepage Journal

    Is it just me or are the tracking pixels way less interesting than the app?

    China can buy the same pixel tracking data from any number of vendors. But the TikTok app has, for example, been caught sniffing clipboards even after they were caught previously and promised to stop. And more relevantly, they algorithmically present content like everybody else does — is that really who we want making those recommendations to children?

    I recognize there's a real freedom of speech issue here, but it's also complicated.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. It is a whole different game. These pixels can track when somebody visits several web-pages with tracking pixels from the same group, nothing more.

    • You think Facebook or Google or insert corp name here are any better at making recommendations to children?

      • Re:Is it just me (Score:4, Interesting)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday March 25, 2023 @02:48PM (#63398923) Homepage Journal

        You think Facebook or Google or insert corp name here are any better at making recommendations to children?

        I don't know that better is the right word, but I would say they are specifically less likely to intentionally promote content in a way intended to bring about the economic or other downfall of the United States.

        Nowhere in this am I attempting to ascribe innocence to the USA in anything, I'm addressing the specific topic at hand. My posting history proves I'm willing to discuss this nation's ills when they are relevant. In this case, what you're doing is using whataboutism.

        • You think Facebook or Google or insert corp name here are any better at making recommendations to children?

          I don't know that better is the right word, but I would say they are specifically less likely to intentionally promote content in a way intended to bring about the economic or other downfall of the United States.

          Nowhere in this am I attempting to ascribe innocence to the USA in anything, I'm addressing the specific topic at hand. My posting history proves I'm willing to discuss this nation's ills when they are relevant. In this case, what you're doing is using whataboutism.

          From what I've been seeing its questionable whether school boards in the USA can be trusted to make recommendations to children (with respect to recommended reading material in the libraries).

          • Obviously, any organisation or department may have a certain slant, the objection here is more against targeted manipulation, a la Cambridge Analytics.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Let's not try to put the onus on tiktok here. This is the state government's fault.

    Also almost every site I've been to has a facebook or google tracker. I have yet to see one tiktok one. I use noscript and uMatrix.

  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday March 25, 2023 @12:55PM (#63398765)

    Tracking pixels do not place themselves inside a web-page. They are either deliberately placed or they come with some library or framework and the developer did not care and did not check for them. They are _not_ hard to find.

  • Not TikTok's fault (Score:4, Informative)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Saturday March 25, 2023 @12:55PM (#63398767) Homepage
    This is entirely the fault of incompetent webmasters. Either they installed the pixels or, more likely, they blindly ran some stupid script without having a clue what it did. 90% of IT people...aren't...
  • If you don't trust TikTok then don't advertise there, then you won't need tracking that you then complain about. Or don't bother with the tracking part, like how advertising used to be - you put an ad in a publication and you have some idea of the number of copies going out and where they are going but you don't have a way to count each and every view and reaction. The 21st century is dumb as fuck.

  • by JamesTRexx ( 675890 ) on Saturday March 25, 2023 @02:16PM (#63398863) Journal

    ... why I've always used NoScript on Firefox and nowadays nMatrix on Pale Moon. If content doesn't come from your website, my browser has no need to download it.

    There's so much bloat on websites from frameworks and advertising tracking and social media links, it's like having a news crew follow you as you walk down the road, broadcasting everything you do.

    • by indytx ( 825419 )

      ... why I've always used NoScript on Firefox and nowadays nMatrix on Pale Moon. If content doesn't come from your website, my browser has no need to download it.

      There's so much bloat on websites from frameworks and advertising tracking and social media links, it's like having a news crew follow you as you walk down the road, broadcasting everything you do.

      This. Just block everything and then selectively unblock those that you actually need to access the content. You really can't trust anyone these days.

  • It sure is bash tiktok week on american 'newssites', as most articles are related to facebook, google and other american companies that does the same thing as TikTok, but only TikTok is mentioned in the title.

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