This Friday, March 31, NATO sent a note to its employees prohibiting the download and use of the Chinese short video application TikTok on their work phones.
Before NATO, several administrations in Western countries recently banned their employees from installing the TikTok app on their work phones. On March 24, the Ministry of Transformation and Public Function of France indicated that “recreational” applications, such as Instagram, Netflix, Candy Crush and therefore TikTok, did not have the level of cybersecurity and data protection necessary to be used in the professional telephone numbers of French civil servants.
Data transmission
But the TikTok application, with 1.7 billion users worldwide and owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, is in the crosshairs of Western countries, in the context of the latent trade dispute between China and the United States. The latter suspect that TikTok transmits the personal data of its users directly to the Chinese authorities.
Hearing a few days ago by the US Congress, the CEO of TikTok Shou Chew indicated that “there is no evidence that the Chinese government has access to the data [récupérées par TikTok]. They never asked us.” still reports CNN.
The US Congress has been debating for several weeks to permanently ban TikTok on US soil.
In France, a commission of inquiry was launched in the Senate on March 13. “We cannot affirm that TikTok is not a potential instrument of disinformation or manipulation for the benefit of anti-democratic regimes, nor that its use is safe with respect to the necessary data protection. The commission of inquiry will shed light on these issues and make recommendations,” said Claude Malhuret, Senator from Allier and rapporteur for the commission.
Source: BFM TV
