By John Ikani
The French Civil Service Ministry has taken a strict stance against the use of the Chinese-owned video-sharing app, TikTok, on the work phones of civil servants.
Civil Service Minister Stanislas Guerini in an issued statement said “recreational applications, including TikTok, pose cybersecurity threats and do not meet the required levels of data protection for administrative equipment.
“To ensure the safety of the administration and its civil servants, the government has immediately banned the use of TikTok on professional phones.”
The decision follows the steps of several European and international partners who have restricted or banned the app from their administrations in recent weeks.
The ban is subject to strict compliance monitoring with Guerini stressing that exceptions will only be made for professional reasons, such as institutional communication of an administration.
ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, has been under scrutiny globally over concerns of users’ data privacy, as it is believed that the Chinese government could access users’ location and contact data through the app.
TikTok has also faced restrictions from the UK parliament, the Dutch and Belgian administrations, and the New Zealand parliament in recent weeks.
Even the European Union’s two most influential policy-making institutions, the Council and the Commission, banned TikTok from staff phones for cybersecurity reasons in late February.
