this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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Last month, the popular social video app TikTok finalized a deal with investors, including Oracle, to appease a bipartisan bill that called on the app’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to divest — or be banned in the United States.

The deal launched a frenzy among its US-based users over possible censorship, with some accusing it of taking down footage of ICE agents or restricting searches for words, such as “Epstein.” While TikTok denied these claims, pointing to a “data center power outage,” the app also changed its privacy policy at the time — now allowing it to collect more detailed data on its users, including their precise locations.

That sparked new fears. As The New Republic argues, TikTok’s deal means that agents at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whose deportation efforts have been supercharged under the Trump administration, could skip tedious court-ordered data requests and monitor users by buying their data from private data brokers that obtain the info from TikTok directly — a “highly ironic” development, the magazine writes, considering the ByteDance deal was motivated in the first place by fears over Chinese state-sponsored surveillance.

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[–] atropa@piefed.social 0 points 21 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 1 points 20 hours ago

The attack chain is as follows: the threat actors masquerade as "Signal Support" or a support chatbot named "Signal Security ChatBot" to initiate direct contact with prospective targets, urging them to provide a PIN or verification code received via SMS, or risk facing data loss.

Should the victim comply, the attackers can register the account and gain access to the victim's profile, settings, contacts, and block list through a device and mobile phone number under their control. While the stolen PIN does not enable access to the victim's past conversations, a threat actor can use it to capture incoming messages and send messages posing as the victim.

That target user, who has by now lost access to their account, is then instructed by the threat actor disguised as the support chatbot to register for a new account.

Don't give your signal PIN to someone via text? And even if you did, they still don't have your message history.