Big tech monitors your keystrokes

What do hacking (no, not ethical hacking) tools and big tech have in common? Collecting information on what you type on your device while visiting external websites might be one thing.

You know those in-app browsers that pop up from time to time when using mobile apps? According to Felix Krause, a former Google engineer, it turns out that some of them might be getting to know you a little too well. His recently published research shows that TikTok’s in-app browser can track all your keystroke (think passwords and credit card information) by injecting Javascript code snippets into external websites.

Despite these findings, there isn’t any way of knowing or proving whether TikTok and other big tech companies are using this data in a malicious way. The video-sharing app shared that they “do not collect keystroke or text inputs through this code,” and that the Javascript snippets are only being used for troubleshooting and testing. Ongoing data privacy concerns over the Chinese-owned app don’t make this situation any rosier.

If you’re still feeling uneasy, Krause created InAppBrowser.com to help you verify what apps do in their webviews. You can test this by opening the app you want to analyze, sharing the InAppBrowser.com URL through a feed post or DM, and tapping on the link inside the app to open it. The code of the website is open source, which allows the community to improve its efficiency over time.

As part of his research, Krause included a FAQ for the non-techies, explaining that you can protect yourself by making sure that the app you’re using offers a way to open links in your default browser, rather than the bespoke ones.

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