TikTok has been suspended by various government agencies

The European Parliament has decided to ban employees from using Chinese short video-sharing app TikTok for security reasons, EU officials said on Monday. The ban will also apply to private devices that have parliamentary email and other Internet access installed.

It is also the latest move by the European Parliament as an EU institution, after the European Commission and the European Council announced last week that TikTok would be banned from employees’ phones. The move highlights security concerns in Europe about the Chinese company, which is owned by ByteDance, and the way the Chinese government collects user data.

The European Parliament’s ban followed an announcement by the White House that it was giving government agencies 30 days to uninstall TikTok from their federal devices and systems.

Reuters notes that Sharanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told agencies in the memo that in order to keep U.S. data secure, all federal agencies must remove TikTok from their phones and devices to prevent the Chinese company from accessing Internet usage information on U.S. public devices.

Meanwhile, Canada has imposed a ban on TikTok, requiring the app to be banned on all government-issued mobile devices. “I suspect that as the government takes this significant step and tells all federal employees they can no longer use TikTok on their work phones, many Canadians, both corporations and private individuals, will reflect on the security of their own data and perhaps make choices,” Trudeau said.

The Danish parliament announced that it had asked its MPS and staff to remove TikTok from their mobile devices due to “espionage risks” after the European Union’s executive Commission banned its staff from using TikTok on work devices to protect information security.

tiktok has been suspended by various government agencies

TikTok, an overseas version of Tikyin, a video-sharing app developed by Chinese company ByteDance, is popular with young people. But the app has come under increasing scrutiny in Europe and the United States because it is owned by a Chinese company. The fear is that Beijing could use it to collect data on Western users or to promote pro-Beijing narratives and disinformation. Bytedance moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020.

While Beijing denies TikTok is a security risk, the US, Canada, India and other governments and parliaments have so far enacted similar bans.