VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — With the TikTok ban stalled by President Trump's executive order, which gave owner Bytedance 75 more days to sell, the question looms: how do apps like TikTok protect your data?
“ I don’t want to minimize that question we need to answer that question, but on a deeper level we have to understand there are a lot of people who don’t care to answer the question they just want to do what they want to do,” says Len Gonzales, CEO of Virginia Beach-based Ally Cyber Investigations.
Gonzales says over the years, he has seen several victims get hacked — not once but twice.
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“I see the cyber world the digital domain from a completely different lens," says Gonzales. "I see the repetitiveness.”
The concern over security sparked conversations of shutting down the popular video app TikTok and caused many to migrate to the alternative, RedNote, which is also owned by a Chinese company.
“Now we’ve got to really consider the irony I guess,” said Gonzales. “Now that when a 170 million Americans were told that TikTok was going to go away. Where is the first place they migrated to another Chinese app… Again, we’re talking about securing our data but then we go directly to the place where our data is most likely to be taken.”
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News 3 reached out to several TikTok users, some of whom said downloaded the app as a way to say they won’t be controlled by the government.
“So we want people to be informed we do not regulate people’s behavior,” said Del. Bonita Anthony, of Virginia's 92nd District.
Anthony represents parts of Norfolk and South Norfolk, and is the subcommittee chair for online and data protection.
She tells News 3 she is currently working on HB2268, which would bring experts together to help the gttorney general’s office in overseeing and enforcing laws related to cybersecurity, data privacy, AI and other emerging tech.
Watch: Virginia attorne general sues TikTok
“We just want to make sure there is compliance and there is protection for folks,” says Anthony. “Because technology and the emerging technology is a part of our way of life.”
“The fact of the matter is I believe people are going to choose whether to do it than to not do it,” explains Gonzales. “Because they want full functionality of the app or any other thing that they're trying to work on.”
For Gonzales, he shares to consumers, when downloading apps: to look at the permissions and really consider what kind of access you’re allowing on your devices. He adds that you can enable or disable any part of the app.
