The European Comission banned the use of TikTok on cell phones and any device of its staff in order to improve “information protection and increase cybersecurity”, because ByteDance, the Chinese company behind the social network, suffered allegations that it sells data to the government of Xi Jinping.
From the platform they indicated that they are “very disappointed with this decision, which was taken from wrong points of view and preconceived negative conceptions.” In addition, they indicated that they act “in the same way as the rest of the applications of the same type.” The European Comission has very strong laws about the collection and sale of data by internet companies.
This is not the first time that the Chinese are banned from phones that belong to the government, since at the time the United States prohibited installing the application on these devices for fear that the Asian nation could access this data. In addition to this various nations belonging to the European Comissionlike the Netherlands, have asked their employees to try to avoid the app due to security concerns.
During the last weeks, after the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk, this body had a lot of scrutiny on the social network due to various failures in the new way of operating that the company had, both in terms of cybersecurity and in matters of consumer protection.
Meeting between European leaders and Tik Tok
This ban occurs just over a month since members of the european organization meet with the leaders of the Chinese application in the old continent to talk about the new rules with which they had to comply, in addition to a concern that arose from the espionage of two journalists.
The situation was uncovered after Byte Dance indicated that one of its employees had accessed the information of two journalists, a former reporter for Buzz Feed and another for the Financial Times, illegally.