David Choffnes

Independent researchers have gone looking for covert “listening” and found none, including a definitive 2018 Northeastern University study that has yet to be superseded. What they did catch in a handful of cases were screen recordings or image and video uploads to third parties. Creepy, sure, but not a hot mic.

Yet there were critics even in the moment of glory. “It reveals the kind of sweeping surveillance going on,” warned David Choffnes, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University in Boston, when contacted by a reporter. 

“At a fundamental biological level, this is you and only you,” said David Choffnes, a computer science professor at Northeastern University and executive director of its Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute.

David Choffnes, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University, notes that “when we think of what happens between the walls of our homes, we think of it as a trusted, private place.

“At a fundamental biological level, this is you and only you,” said David Choffnes, a computer science professor at Northeastern University and executive director of its Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute.

Meanwhile, David Choffnes, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University in Boston, said he believes there’s a “small chance” that nothing happens to TikTok, but acknowledged that would require “enormous risk on the on the part of the companies that support them.”