TikTok was tracking users for over a year in what appears to be clear violation of Android policies

TikTok was collecting users’ data against Android’s rules, according to a new Wall Street Journal report. Short video platform TikTok was collecting the MAC addresses of its Android users for a period of 18 months, in what appears to be a clear violation of Android policies. These MAC addresses would have helped in identifying the device of each user, and this data could be valuable for advertising and also for possibly more invasive tracking.

Both iOS’ App Store and Android’s Google Play Store had in 2015 changed their policy to ban apps from collecting the MAC addresses of the users, but TikTok had managed to collect this data using a loophole. The report cites a study that showed that there were as many as 350 apps on Google Play Store which had also made use of a similar loophole and used it for targeted advertising purposes.