The only surprising thing about the news of TikTok harvesting data without consent is that anyone is surprised by it.
The Privacy Watchdog is investigating. lol.
Essentially, it seems that the TikTok pixel fires, even if visitors on a site haven’t opted in to accept cookies.
Since most people mindlessly click Accept All on sites these days, I can’t see why there’s such a fuss.
Plus, with a few companies we’ve worked with over the past year, many websites don’t have a proper implementation of cookie consent anyway – they’re loading cookies (all of them, TikTok is just one of many) regardless of the Consent popup response. Nothing nefarious, just incorrect implementation.
Does that mean I’m happy about it? Hell no. I hate being tracked as much as the next person. And the extent to what they collect is worrying (form submit data perhaps?). But I’m realistic about it – I know I have hardly any privacy online… the outrage from some people about this ‘discovery’ seems out of touch with (the terrible, long standing) reality.
