US, UK, New Zealand and others ban TikTok on government devices over safety concerns

Despite being the world’s most downloaded app in 2022, short-form video hosting service TikTok is under the pressure of bans in several countries. Following a recent ban by the US Federal government that prohibits the app from being downloaded on government devices, the UK has followed suit and banned the app from government-owned devices for ministers.

While ministers and government officials have not been prevented from using the app on personal devices, the ban has been described as a “precaution” by the UK’s Cabinet Minister Oliver Dowden.

The UK’s ban comes on the heels of similar restrictions in US, Canada and the European Union. New Zealand has also banned the video-sharing app from all devices with access to the country’s parliamentary network.

“On advice from our cyber security experts, the Parliamentary Service has informed members and staff the app TikTok will be removed from all devices with access to the parliamentary network,” said Rafael Gonzalez-Montero, chief executive of New Zealand’s parliamentary service.

Unlike the US and UK bans, the New Zealand statute will extend to private devices as well though some exceptions will remain. The app was recently banned in government devices in Belgium and in devices of defence personnel in Denmark in the past week.

According to Bloomberg, France is also planning to ask cabinet ministers to avoid using TikTok and similar apps on their personal phones. The app is already banned from their professional phones. Anonymous sources state that the reason behind the move is similar security concerns.

French government spokesman Olivier Veran said earlier that the professional phones of the government members were not compatible with TikTok and other social media.

The app has even more bad news on the horizon as the company announced that the US government has asked it to sell the stake of its Chinese owners or face a possible nationwide ban. The country’s Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS) has recommended that ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok and its Chinese sister app Douyin, divest its stake from the video-sharing app, reported the Wall Street Journal.

Any ban in the US would mean that the company would lose access to its biggest market in the world.

The recommendation highlights what has concerned national authorities across the world about the video-sharing app — the threat of Chinese state authorities taking the vast trove of data collected by TikTok for their own use. The app collects data like names, age, phone numbers, email IDs, location, mobile device identifiers, IP addresses etc.

While the company maintains it doesn’t usually collect other information like keystroke patterns and biometric info, users agree to share this data when signing up. With data being stored in China, there is a massive potential for the data being used by the Chinese government for intelligence-gathering operations as well as to promote propaganda and misinformation.

The app has remained banned in India for nearly three years. The country’s government had stated that TikTok was "prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order". TikTok is also banned in Taiwan for similar reasons but other countries like Iran, Indonesia, Afghanistan and more have banned the app over the app’s alleged pornography-related content.