On Thursday, the European Commission highly concerned over data protection by staff official devices, banned TikTok on official devices of staff.
The purpose behind banning the video-sharing TikTok app is that the European Commission staff cannot use any Chinese-owned app neither TikTok app on personal devices must-including those devices that have official apps regarding government and department apps, must not contain any Chinese-owned app nor TikTok, the European Commission spokesperson said, confirming a report by news website Euractiv.
Employees must remove TikTok on personal and official devices as soon as they can and should do so by March 15, European Comission officials.
ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, in recent months has faced serious scrutiny by the Western over fright about how much access Beijing has to user data.
Last year, the United States authorities banned the app from devices of the federal government. While some US lawmakers are trying to prohibit TikTok from operating in the United States. While referring similar threat the Dutch officials advised public officials to stay from Chinese-owned apps.
In November, TikTok officials acknowledged some Chinese could access the data of European users. Shou Zi, the Chief Executive of TikTok was in Brussels in January, to discuss the issue with EU officials about the data-stealing threat, EU officials forewarned TikTok to make ensure the security of European users’ data.
TikTok officials urged the company was working on a “robust” system for processing Europeans’ data in Europe, an EU spokesman said at the time. TikTok has also promised to hold US users’ data in the United States to allay Washington’s concerns.
