What Is tiktok.com, and Is It Safe?

Last Updated on October 31, 2024 by Mathew Diekhake

TikTok (tiktok.com) is a short video clip website owned by ByteDance (bytedance.com). TikTok users can upload videos that range from 3 seconds to 10 minutes, making it a cross between Vine (vine.co) and YouTube (youtube.com). Though owned by a Chinese company, TikTok is mostly used by non-Chinese people, and a Chinese counterpart Douyin (douyin.com), owned by the same parent company, gets the most Chinese traffic.

ALTERNATIVES

Similar sites to tiktok.com include instagram.com, facebook.com, linkedin.com, discord.com, patreon.com, twitter.com, reddit.com, t.co, pinterest.com, and messenger.com.

DESCRIPTION

I couldn’t see any homepage on tiktok.com at all without creating an account. I could, however, check content from search engines and watch videos on single post pages via the search engines. I found this setup to be disingenuous and distrustful. That said, it’s not unusual for similar sites to not allow the viewing of any content from the homepage. For instance, I don’t think I can see anything on Instagram without having signed up first. Thankfully tiktok.com made it easy to continue as a guest during my visit. I continued as a guest and started viewing the content. There was only one video above the fold, shown to be in smartphone dimensions. I could scroll down the page and view more of them: only one video fitted per page and I had to scroll to view the next one. Something I’ve noticed in web design is that when you use the smartphone dimensions for videos, people know to scroll to view more. It could be because people have learned to scroll on smartphones and since they see a smartphone on the screen, they know to scroll. Is tiktok.com the leading source for such scrolling? Possibly, but I have reviewed numerous porn sites with the same scrolling as well. There weren’t many links above the fold or many things for me to click on or around the videos, which made me think that the experience must be different for guests than it is for signed-in users.

HISTORY

As of March 2023, tiktok.com has 2.246 billion monthly views (1.7B, Feb 2023), acccording to Similar Web. The Wayback Machine estimates that tiktok.com was founded on September 2016. The Internet Archive has saved tiktok.com 3,586,545 times between December 6, 1998 and April 13, 2024.

Is tiktok.com Safe?

I analyzed tiktok.com for malware and malicious content to check if it was legit or a scam. Here are the results:

I checked tiktok.com on Sucuri, and it returned with no issues.

Security hardening flaws:

• Missing security header for ClickJacking Protection. Affected pages:
  https://www.tiktok.com/404?fromUrl=/404javascript.js
  https://www.tiktok.com/404?fromUrl=/404testpage4525d2fdc
• Missing Strict-Transport-Security security header. Affected pages:
  https://www.tiktok.com/404?fromUrl=/404javascript.js
  https://www.tiktok.com/404?fromUrl=/404testpage4525d2fdc
• Missing Content-Security-Policy directive. Affected pages:
  https://www.tiktok.com/404?fromUrl=/404javascript.js
  https://www.tiktok.com/404?fromUrl=/404testpage4525d2fdc

I then ran a parasite scan with Unmask Parasites on tiktok.com and it is clean.

I also checked tiktok.com on VirusTotal, and it is clean.

Further, tiktok.com passed all blocklist engines on URLVoid.

In conclusion, tiktok.com is safe. But it has security header issues. OVERALL GRADE: Safe.

Links and Profiles

Website: tiktok.com