TikTok has been making the news a lot lately with States like Montana electing for an all out ban of the popular social media platform. If you are not already familiar with the various arguments for or against, well, here’s the quick and dirty run down.

For Banning TikTok:
– Bad for the kiddos
– National security concern based on national origins in China
– Poor data privacy management

Against Banning TikTok:
– 1st Amendment Rights (‘cuz AMERICA!)
– Bad for business (Seriously, some people rely heavily on TikTok to make a living)
– TikTok is not the only social media giant with data privacy concerns (EU + Facebook = recent.news), so isn’t it better to focus on responsible use?
– Precedent for censorship of other platforms

This list is by no means exhaustive, but hopefully you get the gist. Now, I do not pretend to be an expert about anything TikTok, and frankly, the jury is still out for me as far as which side of the fence I have decided to stand. That being said, let’s talk about one major concern I have with TikTok after all of about 2 seconds creating my own account.

TikTok uses your phone number as your primary account verification.

👇 Me panicking!

Heart be still, Kodama! I mean, it’s not really that big a deal right? Ok, for the average person, probably not, but here’s why this matters.

I kind of like to blend in (it’s a chameleon thing), so using my personal phone number to set up a social media account, well, that’s some scary stuff. Thanks to various cellphone providers though, I can pretty easily anonymize myself by buying a prepaid SIM card, and if you see where this is going, congrats, you are ahead of the curve! A lot of times these prepaid SIMS might use recycled phone numbers since they are more transitory in nature. Well, what happens when you happen to pick up a SIM card with a phone number associated with someone else’s TikTok account?

GAMEOVER

Seriously! I popped in the SIM, activated, signed into TikTok using their text verification system and to my surprise I happen to already have a TikTok account with 37 followers, 3004 likes, and a lot of video content of a young black girl mostly posting short dance skits, except… I didn’t do any of this. Yikes! I just stumbled upon this, but what if I actually wanted to take over someone’s TikTok account? Anyone ever heard of SIM jacking/swapping?

Kodama the chameleon is a little creeped out right now… He’ll be back in a little while once his nerves are settled.