YouTube and TikTok track users more than any other social media app, study finds: Should we be concerned about privacy?

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TikTok and YouTube are the two social media apps that track their users’ personal data the most, according to recent research by URL Genius .

To reach this conclusion, the marketing firm used Apple’s new “ Record engineer database App Activity ” feature, which lets users know which apps are communicating with various networks, saving a summary of data, sensors and Internet access per app.

And we also conducted research on 200 apps and 20 different app categories to find out how they track users' personal data.

Google-owned YouTube got the most contacts from its own networks (71%), and ByteDance-owned TikTok got most of its contacts from third-party trackers, raising many concerns about privacy and security.

In this article, we explore the results of this study and some data privacy concerns involving users, businesses, and vendors.

What are the key findings?
URL Genius research showed that the average number of contacts for social media apps is 6. However, YouTube and TikTok were above this number, with 14 network contacts respectively.


It's worth noting that the study estimated how many different domains track a user's activity over the course of a visit before they log into an account, so that number may increase after they log into accounts.

Youtube
For YouTube, 71% of the trackers were first-party network contacts. This implies that the data collection is for their own purposes, often to serve relevant ads to users. The remaining contacts (4) were from third-party domains.

Tik Tok
TikTok, on the other hand, showed more worrying results: 13 of the 14 contacts in the network were third parties and tracking was carried out even when users did not authorize tracking in the app settings.

This means they can collect information from the moment you open the app and before you sign up. This includes information such as:

your location, IP address;
the device you are using;
search history;
inter alia.
According to the research, "consumers who have not given permission to be tracked will be alarmed by the number of third-party networks contacted by apps, even with minimal app usage."

Third-party risk: what are the privacy concerns?
Since we're talking about third-party networking contacts, you might be wondering, why is this so problematic? The answer is: there are a lot of unanswered questions.

Who is tracking this data?
What data is shared and how will it be used?
What happens to activity tracking on other sites after I leave the app?
Additionally, consumers cannot disable potential trackers, so if they want to avoid this, their only alternative will be to not use the app.

Data privacy scandals: This is not the first time
This is neither the first nor the last scandal related to data privacy. In the past, companies such as Google and Facebook have also been embroiled in controversies over "unfair marketing practices" that seriously affected their brand image.

One example is the infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the personal data of millions of Facebook users was collected without consent and then used for political advertising.

Since then, Mark Zuckerberg's company has been facing many challenges to gain the trust of online users. In 2021, according to the US Digital Trust Benchmark Report , the social media platform was considered the least trustworthy for the second year in a row.

Another case is Google, which in January 2022 was sued in the US for deceptive and unfair practices in obtaining user location data and was linked to other relevant data scandals.

Is user tracking the only way to get relevant data?
Data collection has become the focus of conversation among social media users in recent years.

Furthermore, with new privacy regulations being implemented around the world, users are increasingly interested in issues such as customer data ownership and the processing of their data.

One example is Apple, which launched App Tracking Transparency to ask users for permission before tracking them across other apps and websites.

So, is user tracking the only way to generate effective marketing strategies? The answer is no.

We know how essential data is to your Digital Marketing efforts ! However, more than ever, businesses must explore other ways to reach their audience and rethink technology as a way to serve the user and improve their experience, rather than impair it. Privacy matters! Therefore, businesses must reconcile business and privacy demands.

To achieve this goal, we recommend that you use strategies and tools to obtain first-party data that can meet privacy and transparency requirements . This will be key to strengthening customer relationships and increasing brand value through trust.

Of course, this process will take time, but the change will be urgent in order to update their strategies, now that users can see for themselv