How Much Is TikTok Invading Your Privacy? Is It Still Listening When The App Is “Off”?

You already know that Amazon’s smart home device Alexa is monitoring and listening to your daily life through the inbuilt microphone. Alarmingly, Amazon’s Alexa is not the most dangerous of this new wave of smart devices.

That crown might go to TikTok.

I was not until recently a user on TikTok. I just installed the app minutes ago, yet I have already noticed an alarming amount of microphone usage from the app.

Here is how I know:

Every time an app that uses the microphone is triggered, the microphone turns on, cutting any audio or podcast feed already playing.

This has been the case for phone calls, and even the ever annoying, pesky, seemingly un-installable “Google Assistant”.

I play audio for hours a day through my old fashioned over-ear wireless headphones, and for the most part this is an uninterrupted steady stream of voice and music piped straight to my ears.

On TikTok, that turned into an unmitigated disaster of an experience. While it would be understandable for sound to be incoming while the app played video or music, my podcast stream was interrupted no less than 5 times in a 15 second stretch, while I was typing profile details.

I don’t know if this is a problem with the coding of the app, or if the company is indeed triggering my microphone and listening every 3 seconds…

But since the same microphone trigger doesn’t happen with Triller, I am very concerned about the apps safety, and reconsidering if I should keep it.