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Tiktok ban on company cell phones in France
The Tiktok app has more than a billion users worldwide. photo
© Marijan Murat/dpa
The short video app may be popular, but it always offends people. France is now pulling the ripcord. But the use of other apps should also be banned.
France wants to ban the short video app Tiktok from the official phones of all state employees. The responsible ministry announced today that these applications do not have the necessary level of cyber security and data protection. In addition to Tiktok, Twitter, Instagram and Netflix are also to be banned. The ban is to come into force immediately.
France is not alone in taking this step. In the USA, Germany and Great Britain, among others, Tiktok is banned on government employees’ work cell phones, including by the EU Commission. A ban on the service, which is particularly popular with young people, is currently being discussed in the USA. The app has more than a billion users worldwide.
The parliamentary administration in Slovakia also prohibits the use of Tiktok for all employees. This emerges from a statement by the Parliamentary Directorate, from which the TASR news agency quoted on Friday. The application will be blocked in Parliament’s entire infrastructure, so that even mobile devices that have the app installed can no longer connect to Parliament’s computer network. Tiktok collects “unreasonably large amounts of information”. These could “be used for a targeted cyber attack,” warned the parliamentary directorate.
Tiktok is under increasing pressure because the platform belongs to the Bytedance group from China. Concerns are being expressed in the US and Europe that Chinese authorities and secret services could collect data about users via Tiktok or influence them. Tiktok rejects the suspicions.