Austria bans TikTok app on federal employees’ professional phones. The country is thus following in the footsteps of other Western countries that have taken the same measure for security reasons.
“The government has decided to ban the installation of TikTok on the devices of the government departments,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement released Wednesday.
The decision was taken on the basis of recommendations from the intelligence services.
“Suppression of the application should allow access to government information to be excluded as much as possible,” said the same source.
It has not been announced when the measure will take effect. Personal devices are not affected. The United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, the Netherlands and the European Commission have already taken similar measures.
This initiative stems from fears over a 2017 Chinese law requiring local businesses to hand over personal data related to national security to authorities.
Beijing ensures that this law does not pose a threat to ordinary users.
While TikTok, a subsidiary of the Chinese group ByteDance, called the bans an act of “xenophobia”, it admitted in December last year to collecting personal data to spy on journalists.
Source: DN
