TikTok Updates US Privacy Policy to Collect “Facial and Voice Fingerprints”

TikTok has been updated Its privacy policy in the United States Inform users that in the future, the application will be able to collect new types of biometric information, including “facial and voice prints”. But when he reached it commonTikTok was unable to explain what types of data these terms refer to, or why the app would need to access this information in the first place.

The company’s privacy policy was updated on June 2 As i saw it Take some crunch. (May be archived version of old policy) I read the lees here.) The new policy details the ways TikTok is now allowed to crawl user content.

The policy states:

We may collect information about the images and sound that are part of your User Content, such as the objects and scenes that appear, the presence and location in an image of facial and body features and characteristics, the nature of voice and text spoken words in your user content. We may collect this information. To enable special video effects, for content moderation, for demographic classification, for content and ad recommendations, and for other non-identifying operations. “

As is often the case with privacy policies, there is a lot of confusion here between what results users are likely to like (like adding video effects) and which results they find more intrusive. (like ad targeting and “demographic classification”) that use a lot We have extensive coverage for future updates that TikTok may add to the platform.

The new privacy policy makes it even clearer that the app can now collect biometric data, that is, measure physical characteristics, including the “facial and voice prints” mentioned above. The policy states that TikTok will seek consent from users before collecting this information, but only when required by law. As Take some crunch Notes, this doesn’t mean much in the US since a file some countries (including Illinois, Texas, and California) provide this type of legal protection. This is because TikTok may think that agreeing to the Terms of Service is the only permission you need.

The changes to TikTok’s privacy policy are likely in response to a recent national class action lawsuit against the company, in which: She agreed to pay $ 92 million For applicants alleging various breaches of privacy. As we reported on this in February, “As part of the settlement, TikTok has agreed to avoid various behaviors that could compromise user privacy unless it specifically discloses such behavior in its privacy policy. confidentiality. ” When asked if these changes were in response to the class action lawsuit, TikTok declined to comment on the case.

Answering several questions about what data the company is currently collecting on users, how it identifies ‘facial and voice fingerprints’, what data it might collect in the future, and what it might do with it. this information, the spokesperson said alone: ​​“As part of our continued commitment to transparency, we recently updated our privacy policy to provide greater clarity on the information we may collect. ”

There is more information, yes, but there is still a lot of clarity. For an app that has struggled to deal with many privacy issues (often made worse by political paranoia), it looks like there is still work to be done.