iPhone apps including TikTok are reading all clipboard data without your permission

The app list mentioned by the experts is quite long and includes a list of reputed apps across genres

By Anirban Roy
March 15, 2020 11:22 +08

Privacy of users is a major concern on dating apps?

Pasteboard, the clipboard of Apple-branded devices keeps user data temporary data, including critical ones such as user location or the chunk of texts that the user has copied for a purpose. The data inside the clipboard is supposed should be limited to the particular app only for users' safety.

But a new investigation by Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk has revealed that the Apple devices including MacBooks, iPad and iPhones keep their clipboard openly accessible to other apps resulting in a list of apps actively reading whatever exists in the device clipboard without users' permission.

The investigators have cited the macOS, iOS and iPadOS lets a developer read the system clipboard data without any authentication. Meaning an app in any of these Apple made devices can read the text data available in clipboard every time the app launches.

The data also remains readable while the user closes and restart that particular app. Which means those apps are aware of a lot of users' online activities through the available text in the clipboard. These apps read the available data in pasteboard when the user launches it. Such apps are also capable of reading the data every time you quit and restart the app.

Through the investigation, the researchers have flagged a list of apps activity as suspicious since they read the pasteboard data to be aware of the present state of the users'. The app list mentioned by the experts is quite long and includes a list of reputed apps across genres.

If you're interested to know about them, here go the detailed app list:

Social Networking