I was originally going to write about another useful Windows program I’d found.
Then I read this latest post on Axis of Easy, by Mark Jeftovic at EasyDNS. Among other things, there’s reports of concerns from U.S. politicians about the amount of information collected from users’ smart phones by TikTok if I install their app.
If I follow the links from Axis of Easy, I go to ZeroHedge and then to a Summit News post written by Steve Watson on November 21, 2022.
I’ve had lots of friends who decide if they doubt or believe news based on whether they like the source. For me, I look at what is said first and then worry about the source later. Can TikTok collect that information if I install it on a smartphone? It’s possible. There are other smartphone apps which have been accused of gathering a lot more information than they need to, and sometimes more information than they admit to in users’ permission settings.
The same problem exists in PC programs. In 2019, there were concerns about the Zoom webconferencing app installing a web server, unasked, on users’ Macintosh PCs. Here’s a story about that from The Register on July 9, 2019, by Tim Anderson.
I don’t currently run GlassWire or WireShark or any similar program. I suppose that might be the next thing for me to do, install something like that to monitor which programs like to gossip and which don’t.