Wishesh Magazine January-2020 Wishesh Magazine January-2020 | Page 97

infrastructure must have made a tik tok account accessible for the hackers to access a user’s account. One of the biggest security concerns is that links are sent through SMS and this is a well- thought trick of cybercriminals to access a user’s phone. One such similar event had taken place in the UK in 2014. Concertgoers received spoofed messages as their mother from the concert promoter and UK’s Information Commissioner charged him a fine of more than $1,00,000. Check Point made Tik Tok’s parent company aware of this and ever since the problem was fixed. One of the lead researchers from Check Point named Oded Vanunu believes that since this app has close to 1.5 billion global users in two and a half years after it has been launched outside China, this is a great opportunity for all the hackers to steal and transfer private information from user’s. More than 300 million users are from India and Check point noted that there is a functionality that lets users send an SMS to themselves to download the application. As of now, there isn’t any information on the number of users being hacked, however, this has put all the tik tok user’s at a risk. The information on the bugs was first sent to all the tik tok teams. What can hackers do? User’s content can be manipulated An upload of unauthorized videos can happen Private videos can be made public Personal information can be extracted. For example, email ID of the user Videos can easily be deleted Steps to minimize this risk Here are a few tips that can help you minimize the risk. Take a look! Tip 1 - If you are a tik tok user, don’t take it for granted that your account might not be compromised. Take it seriously, log in and log out from your account. Tip 2 - It is essential to keep updating the tik tok app whenever you get a notification. Tik tok is been monitored by one of the secretive technology companies in the world and this security is even stronger when compared to Facebook or Twitter. JANUARY 2020 | WWW.WISHESH.NET