Taiwanese should be careful when using Chinese mobile applications due to potential security breaches, the National Security Bureau (NSB) said today, after it recently inspected five of those apps, including TikTok and Xiaohongshu (小紅書, known as RedNote in English).
The inspections by Taiwan's top intelligence agency of the five social media platforms, which also included Sina Weibo, WeChat and Baidu Cloud, found serious violations of users' communication security across several indicators, the NSB said in a statement.
The inspections, conducted jointly with the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau and the Criminal Investigation Bureau, covered 15 indicators in five categories: personal data collection, excess of usage permission, data transmission and sharing, system information extraction, and access to biometric data.
Photo: CNA
All five apps showed breaches across many of the indicators, with RedNote, the Chinese equivalent of Facebook, failing to meet all 15 of them, the NSB said.
Sina Weibo and TikTok did not meet 13 of the 15 indicators, while WeChat failed 10 and Baidu Cloud nine.
"These findings suggest that the China-made apps present cybersecurity risks far beyond the reasonable expectations for data-collection requirements taken by ordinary apps," the NSB wrote in English.
All five apps had security issues related to excessive collection of personal data and abuse of system permissions, with breaches including unauthorized access to screenshots, clipboard content, contact lists and location data, as well as inadequate protection of personal information rights.
All five apps collected users' application lists and device parameters (in the system information extraction category), and four of the five collected facial recognition data, which the NSB said might be deliberately harvested and stored by those apps.
The five apps also sent packets back to servers in China, raising serious concerns about the potential misuse of personal data by third parties, the agency said.
Under China's Cybersecurity Law and National Intelligence Law, Chinese companies are obligated to turn over user data to authorities if it involves national security, public security or intelligence, the NSB said.
Such a practice would significantly breach the privacy of Taiwanese users and could support data collection by specific Chinese agencies, it said.
People must "remain vigilant regarding mobile device security and avoid downloading China-made apps that pose cybersecurity risks, to protect personal data privacy and corporate business secrets," the NSB said.
Since 2019, Taiwan has banned TikTok, Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) and RedNote from government devices and official premises over national security concerns.
However, there is no ban on the private use of the apps.
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