Are Bitcoin Addresses Surveilled?

Following Apple's release of the iOS 14 developer beta for iPhone, it became clear that some of the popular iOS apps were reading clipboard data. This problem first emerged in March, when researchers Tommy Mysk and Talal Hak Bakyr noticed that many other apps, especially TikTok, which has become very popular lately, were regularly calling for data from the iOS and iPadOS clipboard, although not from the text input box.

As Ars Technica noted in a report, this data could potentially include Bitcoin addresses and other financial information. In the iOS 14 beta version, users now receive a warning that another application may copy data from the clipboard. As shown in an image that was shared on the social media platform Twitter recently and went viral, data that is not pasted by the user can appear in 3rd party applications. Apple uses the “Universal Clipboard” feature on its devices such as iPhone, iPad and Mac. Similarly, when devices logged in with Apple ID are close to each other, clipboard data can be read from other devices if you want to paste something from one device to another.

Considering all these situations, it can be very disturbing for your passwords, Bitcoin addresses or sensitive information. Although the function is not being used maliciously by most of the major apps detected, the existence of this feature is enough to raise doubts about the security of data within iOS. In their review, Mysk and Haj Bakry stated that after TikTok, which has an estimated 800 million users, more than 50 applications such as The New York Times, Fox News, Bejeweled, PUBG Mobile, AccuWeather and Hotels.com have this problem. A TikTok representative stated that after the report emerged, an updated version of the application without the clipboard recall feature was sent to the App Store for approval and that the clipboard recall feature from TikTok would be turned off soon.