TikTok’s lesser-known sibling, CapCut, making waves in US. But is it safe?

Chinese application TikTok has long been under spotlight for its huge craze in US communities. But another tool by owner company ByteDance Ltd is now gaining eyeballs and is becoming an emerging player in the world of video-editing tools in United States.It is TikTok’s lesser-known sibling, CapCut.

While TikTok has long been surrounded by allegations of spying and is banned in several countries amid security concerns, the new video editing app is gaining popularity for completely different reasons.

CapCut is an application that helps users edit their videos making them much more professional. Several editing features are available in the video editing tool. One can make use of various templates, use many available filters, apply visual effects and put background music in their videos with the aid of the application.

The app stores the data in the US and Singapore, same as TikTok.

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The videos edited by CapCut can be used not just for TikTok, Facebook and Instagram but also for YouTube because of the way it edits the video in a professional fashion.

The application was launched in 2020, however it is seemed to have grown tremendously in the recent times. According to statistics by Shanghai-based data tracker Diandian, the video editing tool has over 200 million monthly active users.

While on one side, TikTok continues to face increased scrutiny over suspicions of data theft, the sibling app CapCut is not facing the same fate so far.

Even as the calls for TikTok ban grows, the Chinese video hosting app maintains a steadfast position that it never shared the user data with the Chinese authorities or spied on any government.

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Meanwhile, as per CapCut's privacy policy, the video editing app collects photos, videos, user's location, gender and date of birth. These are some of the common things that video-editing apps use.But is it safe?

Last year, the application was topping the app-stores charts in terms of number of downloads in US standing tall alongside other popular apps like TikTok and online fashion store Shein.

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The app, till last year, did not come with any chargeable fees but it started charging users for cloud storage service and for some of its premium options. The company is also recruiting people for designing templates.CapCut along with several other Chinese apps are banned in India.

As per Sensor Tower,CapCut’s global downloads spiked to 43 per centto over 400 million last year. About 7 per cent of its global downloads since last year came just from United States.

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