France has banned the “recreational” use of TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and other apps on government employees’ phones because of concerns about insufficient data security measures.
The ban is to come into force immediately, the Ministry of Public Sector Transformation and the Civil Service wrote on Twitter on Friday.
“In order to guarantee the cybersecurity of our administrations and civil servants, the government has decided to ban recreational applications such as TikTok on the professional phones of civil servants,” Stanislas Guerini said on Friday.
He added that for several weeks, several of France’s European and international partners have adopted measures to restrict or ban the downloading and installation of or the use of the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok by their administrations.
Guerini said recreational applications do not have sufficient levels of cybersecurity and data protection in order to be deployed on administrations’ equipment, adding that exemptions can be given for professional reasons, such as institutional communication of an administration.
Widening ban
A string of governments and institutions have banned TikTok in recent weeks, including the White House, the UK parliament, the Dutch and Belgian administrations, the New Zealand parliament, and the governments of Canada, India, Pakistan, Taiwan and Jordan.
Concerns regarding alleged security risks posed by TikTok have most prominently been raised by US lawmakers and national security officials who say that user data gathered by the app could be accessed by the Chinese government.
Calls to ban TikTok from government devices gained momentum after FBI Director Christopher Wray said in November it poses national security risks.
Late last month, the European Union’s two biggest policy-making institutions – the Commission and the Council – banned TikTok from staff phones for cybersecurity reasons.
Concerns have mounted globally about the potential for the Chinese government to access users’ location and contact data through ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company.
