Tik Tok is edging closer to being banned in the US after the House of Representatives passed a bill requiring ByteDance to sell the platform or face a total ban in the US. The app's security is questioned in many countries, and some states no longer allow the platform to be used on government devices.
States where TikTok is banned – Photo Archive
The latest country to ban TikTok on gadgets used by federal government staff is Australia. The privacy and security of the Chinese-owned app are being called into question, Euronews reports.
In recent weeks, members of “Five Eyes”: The United States, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia have taken action against TikTok. Specialists believe that data can be collected from government devices.
Instead, TikTok denies the allegations and says the bans are “basic misinformation” and that they were decided without “deliberation or evidence“, according to the quoted source. In addition, the company Bytedance, which owns the application, claims that it is independently run and does not share data with the Chinese government. A project to store the data of American users is being carried out by the company in Texas, about this project it is said that it will put the Americans out of China's range.
China's strict data privacy laws have prompted companies such as Yahoo, Airbnb and LinkedIn to exit or scale back their operations in the country.
Countries that ban the Chinese app
The most important institutions of the European Union: the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the EU have banned TikTok on staff devices, for reasons of cyber security. The ban will enter into force on March 20, for the European Parliament. Moreover, MPs are advised to remove the app from their personal phones as well.
For security reasons, TikTok will be banned on all devices in Australia owned by the federal government, as of April 4.
And Estonia it appears that it is preparing to stop using the app on the work phones of civil servants.
On March 16, UK stopped the use of TikTok on all official government devices. Oliver Dowden, British Secretary of State in the Cabinet Office, announced the decision in a statement to the UK House of Commons, according to Euronews.
“This is a precautionary measure. We know there's already limited use of TikTok in government, but it's also good cyber hygiene“, the minister declared in his speech before the deputies.
A report by the UK's National Cyber Security Center found that “there could be a risk in how sensitive government data is accessed and used by certain platforms“.
French government will ban apps like TikTok, Netflix and Instagram from the work phones of 2.5 million civil servants from March 24.
“Leisure applications do not have sufficient levels of cyber security and data protection to be deployed on management equipment. Therefore, these applications may pose a risk to the data protection of these administrations and civil servants“, the French government stated in a statement.
In the Netherlandsthe Home Secretary has discouraged the use of all apps from “countries with an aggressive cyber program targeting the Netherlands or Dutch interests” on government-issued phones, without specifically identifying TikTok.
The Norwegian Parliament banned TikTok on government devices in March, while still allowing civil servants to use the app for business purposes on their personal devices. The country's justice minister, Emilie Enger Mehl, said: “Norwegian intelligence services point to Russia and China as the main risk factors for Norway's security interests“.
Also since March, the app is also banned on devices owned or paid for by the government of Belgiumfor half a year, due to cybersecurity, privacy and disinformation concerns.
And in Denmarkthe Ministry of Defense reported that “will prohibit the use of the application in official establishments” as a cyber security measure.
The ministry stated that “there were important security considerations within the Ministry of Defense combined with a very limited work-related need to use the application” and that employees “are required to uninstall TikTok from their work phones and other official devices as soon as possible if they have previously installed it“.
United States of America
Last week, in the USA passed the bill requiring ByteDance to split from the platform or face a nationwide ban.
The project also needs the approval of the Senate, after receiving a vote from the House of Representatives. If both chambers approve the bill, President Joe Biden has said he will sign it into law. Incidentally, more than 50% of US states have already banned TikTok from government devices due to data security concerns, and the US government has given agencies until the end of March to delete the app from federal devices and systems.
The FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance may share TikTok user data with China's authoritarian government.
In the Canada, in late February, officials announced that the app would be banned from government-owned phones. Again in new zealandthe same measure will come into effect from the end of March and only applies to 500 people in the parliamentary complex.
In the India, Tik Tok and dozens of other Chinese apps have been banned since 2020 due to privacy and security concerns. Again in TaiwanTik Tok is banned from public sector use from the end of 2022.
Pakistani authorities have temporarily banned TikTok at least four times since October 2020, citing concerns that the app promotes immoral content. In the AfghanistanTikTok and PUBG game can no longer be used from 2022.
Since the end of last year and Nepal banned the social media platform on the grounds that it disrupts “social harmony” in the country.
