TikTok to Get Banned in France for Use on Smartphones of Civil Servants

France will ban using Chinese language-owned video-sharing app TikTok on the work telephones of civil servants, Civil Service Minister Stanislas Guerini mentioned on his Twitter account.

“With a purpose to assure the cybersecurity of our administrations and civil servants, the federal government has determined to ban leisure purposes corresponding to TikTok on the skilled telephones of civil servants,” he mentioned in an announcement.

He added that for a number of weeks, a number of of France’s European and worldwide companions have adopted measures to limit or ban the downloading and set up of the TikTok software by their administrations.

Guerini mentioned leisure purposes would not have adequate ranges of cybersecurity and information safety with a purpose to be deployed on administrations’ tools, including that the ban is efficient instantly and that authorities companies will monitor compliance.

He mentioned that, exceptionally, exemptions might be given for skilled causes, corresponding to institutional communication of an administration.

A string of Western governments and establishments have banned TikTok in current weeks, together with the UK parliament, the Dutch and Belgian administrations and the New Zealand parliament.

Late final month, the European Union’s two greatest policy-making establishments — the Fee and the Council — banned TikTok from employees telephones for cybersecurity causes.

Considerations have mounted globally in regards to the potential for the Chinese language authorities to entry customers’ location and speak to information by way of ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese language dad or mum firm.

In the meantime, US lawmakers at a congressional listening to on Thursday accused TikTok of serving dangerous content material and inflicting “emotional misery” on younger customers, grilling the Chinese language-owned app’s CEO on the corporate’s outsized affect on teenagers.

Chew, in his first look earlier than Congress, testified that whereas the “overwhelming majority” of TikTok customers are over the age of 18, the corporate has invested in measures to guard younger individuals who use the app.

© Thomson Reuters 2023