Some of Australia’s largest and best-known brands are being urged to remove a tracking tool from Chinese-owned social media giant TikTok, amid revelations it is harvesting Australians’ data including email addresses, mobile phone numbers and browsing histories without their knowledge or consent, in a potential breach of the nation’s privacy laws.

TikTok’s tracking tool, known as a pixel, is an invisible piece of code that tracks a user’s web history and personal information, even if the user doesn’t have a TikTok account. The pixel can then track a user across the internet and piece together their identity including their email, phone number and buying habits – even if they don’t have TikTok on their phone.

Marketers often use tracking pixels for legitimate purposes, including re-targeting campaigns and to deliver more relevant ads that follow users across websites. Tech giants such as Meta (owner of Facebook) and Google have their own tracking pixels. But tests show the pixel from TikTok, owned by Beijing-based parent company ByteDance, doesn’t wait for user consent and is more aggressive in how it scrapes the data – data that may be made available for sharing with other Chinese corporations and the Chinese government.

The revelations have prompted calls for Australia’s information commissioner to urgently launch an investigation and for websites to remove TikTok’s tracking pixel.

Tests run by this masthead found TikTok’s pixel scrapes a user’s email address and mobile phone information across some of Australia’s most-visited websites, including Kmart, Sportsbet and Beyond Blue, often taking the information even before a user has clicked “I agree” or “I consent” on an online form.

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/mass-breach-of-privacy-tiktok-under-fire-for-tracking-users-online-20231224-p5etik.html

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Cartoon at top from The New Yorker c.1960s