A video clip of a supposed American official warning against using TikTok is doing the rounds on the Internet. The speaker is heard saying that TikTok breaches the privacy of its users and puts them at risk by "stealing" search data, location data, etc.

In January this year, the US Army designated TikTok as a 'cyber threat' and banned soldiers from using it from all government-owned phones.

What kind of risks are posed by the video app? "There are several kinds of threats in this sphere – from petty to major crime, active espionage, biometric and data collection, influence operations, and outright election manipulation, to name a few," writes Abhijit Iyer-Mitra for 'The Print'. He adds, "TikTok collected 45 percent more data than other applications, and worryingly shared all such collected information with the state-run China Telecom. Moreover, Chinese laws now mandate that companies have to share data with the Chinese government as and when required."

It's said that, when it comes to threat to privacy, TikTok is far worse than Facebook.