European Commission which is considered the executive branch of the European Union, has recently announced the ban on the use of the Tik Tok social network on the Commission’s devices. Also, this organization has asked its employees to remove the mentioned application from their smartphones, personal tablets and any device they use for work.
Why has the European Commission banned TikTok?
According to the statement published by the European Commission, new measures have been taken in order to remove the cyber security of this institution against threats and prevent possible attacks. On the other hand, it has been announced that the security measures of other social platforms will be under constant review by the commission.
It is worth noting that the executive branch of the European Union, approx 32 thousand employees It has permanent and contract and this new request includes all of them. The Tik Tok application must be removed from the devices by the middle of next month, and if the employees fail to do so within the stipulated time, they will lose access to corporate services and applications, including email and Skype.
In response to the action of the European Commission, Tik Tok’s spokesperson claims that this decision was based on fundamental misunderstandings and misconceptions. They expected that this European institution would have contacted them directly or at least provided them with explanations about the said issue. TikTok executives appear to have requested a meeting with European officials to show them how they protect the data of 125 million active users on the continent.
TikTok is trying to regain the necessary trust around security issues by deploying three data centers in Europe and keeping users’ data inside this continent. It has also been announced that the access of employees of this social network to user data will be more limited to minimize the possibility of information leakage outside of Europe.
It is worth noting that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is established in China, and the authorities of many countries have expressed their concern about the possible abuse of this application by the Chinese government and unauthorized access to the data of citizens of other countries. In a similar move, US lawmakers have banned the use of TikTok on government devices and even restricted its use on some universities’ networks. It is said that efforts are being made to permanently and completely ban Tik Tok in the United States; Although they have not reached any results so far.
