Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD: The European Commission has banned the social media platform TikTok on official devices that are used by staff amid concerns over data protection, a spokesperson said on Thursday.
The prohibition also means European Commission staff cannot use the Chinese-owned app on personal devices including phones on which official apps have been installed, the spokesperson told AFP, verifying a report by the Euractiv news website.
As per the report, employees have no choice but to remove the app as early as possible and have till March 15 to do so.
TikTok’s parent company is ByteDance, which is Chinese, and has faced increasing Western scrutiny in the past few months over fears about how much access Beijing has to user data.
Some American lawmakers want to complete ban TikTok use in US
Last year, the United States banned the app from federal government devices, while a number of US lawmakers are trying to ban TikTok from operating in the United States.
In January, the Dutch government, as per a report, advised public officials to steer clear of the app over similar concerns.
In November 2022, TikTok had admitted that some members of the staff in China can access European users’s data.
In January, TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew was in Brussels for discussions with EU officials during which they warned TikTok to make sure that European users’ data is safe.
Shou had insisted the company was carrying out measures to build a “robust” system for processing Europeans’ data in Europe, an EU spokesman said at the time.
TikTok has also vowed to hold US users’ data in the United States to mitigate Washington’s concerns.
