European Commission bans TikTok on staff devices
EC becomes the latest government to ban TikTok “for security reasons”
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The European Union’s (EU) executivearm, the European Commission (EC), has ordered its staff to removestratospherically popularsocial media platform TikTok from officialsmartphonesand devices, citing security concerns.
PerBBC News, the diktat, which has been given a deadline of March 15, 2023, comes as TikTokcontinues to face western pressuredue to allegations of its owners, Chinese company ByteDance, sending international user data to the state government, which it can be forced to do per local laws.
Despite ByteDance’s continued assertions that it isn’t treating data in this way, which would amount to TikTok essentially being a mass-surveillance tool, this ought to raise fears aroundidentity theft, and the general sanctity of an individual’sprivacyonline.
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TikTok, the EU, and you
Sonya Gospodinova, an EU spokesperson, said the decision had been taken by the EC’s corporate management board.
“[It] aims to protect the Commission against cybersecurity threats and actions which may be exploited for cyberattacks against the corporate environment of the commission.”
Workers who don’t comply with the new rule are warned that they will be locked out of official EC applications, including the EC’semail client, and thevideo conferencing softwareSkype for Business. Given that the EC employs around 32,000 people, that could be disruptive.
Despite its admission last year that TikTok can access European user data, ByteDance strenuously denies the need for the bans that world governments, including theUSandNetherlandshave enacted, or have publicly considered enacting, in recent years.
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As the BBC notes, TikTok’s chief executive Shou Zi Chew claimed in January that the social media platform was working on a “robust” system to safely and securely process European user data, following censure from EU officials.
A US-wide ban of the service wasmulled over in 2020, though this appears to have been nixed. Aban across Indiacame into force that same year.
Luke Hughes holds the role of Staff Writer at TechRadar Pro, producing news, features and deals content across topics ranging from computing to cloud services, cybersecurity, data privacy and business software.
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