Many countries around the world have recently banned the Chinese “TikTok” app, most notably the United States, which banned the app on government phones, as well as Britain, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, New Zealand, and many other European Union countries, and the recent announcement by the military of a ban on Al-Suwaidi allowing his employees to download the app on work devices. The block was due to security concerns and allegations of collecting user data.
In 2020, India banned dozens of Chinese apps, including the messaging app “Tik Tok” and WeChat, over privacy and security concerns, and in 2021 the Pakistan Telecom Regulatory Authority announced that the app had been banned for some immoral reasons. Its content comes after authorities decided to ban the app in Afghanistan last April, and then in December, Taiwan banned downloading the app to public sector devices after the FBI said the app posed a national security risk.
Last week, Norway’s parliament banned app downloads on devices with access to the parliamentary system, and France banned public sector workers from downloading “entertainment apps” to work phones, including TikTok.
The European Commission and European Parliament have told officials that TikTok cannot be used on work devices due to concerns about the app’s links to the Chinese government.
The company that owns the application maintains that the Chinese government does not control its data and cannot access it, but the company admitted last November that some employees in China could access European users’ data, while the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently confirmed it. The company is not asked to hand over data collected abroad.
Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, said yesterday that lawmakers will move forward with legislation to address national security concerns over TikTok and the Chinese government’s access to TikTok users’ data for short video clips.
Calls for the US to ban TikTok, owned by China-based Byte Dance, have grown after the US government passed a bipartisan bill to give President Joe Biden executive legal authority to seek an outright ban after the app was banned from being downloaded on devices owned by the US government. .
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