The decision is made with “immediate effect”, Minister Oliver Dowden announced Thursday, citing similar prohibitions decided by the United States, Canada or the European Union.
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Tiktok is now prohibited on government devices in the United Kingdom, Oliver Dowden announced on Thursday March 16. The ban is taken with “immediate effect” he said.
The application of sharing short videos, very popular among young people, is accused by its detractors of allowing access to the Chinese authorities to user data from around the world, which Tiktok disputes. This is a “precautionary,” said the Minister. “We know that there is already a limited use of Tiktok within the government, but it is a good cyberhygiene.”
“Given the particular risk around government devices, which may contain sensitive information, it is both prudent and proportioned to restrict the use of certain applications”, in particular those that access and store a “quantity important data, “he added. This approach follows the similar prohibitions taken in particular by the United States, Canada or the European Union, argued Mr. Dowden.
threatening total prohibition in the United States
This prohibition “does not apply to personal phones” of government employees, specify the authorities in a text published online Thursday. Some, if they need it in the context of their functions, will have the right to install the Chinese application on their professional device but only “on a case by case”, completes the text.
China exhorted the United States on Wednesday to stop “unjustified attacks” against Tiktok, after a request from the United States government to its Chinese parent company to part with it under penalty for reasons of national security. According to the Wall Street Journal and other American daily newspapers, the White House posed an ultimatum: if Tiktok remains in the lap of its owner, the Chinese group bytedance, it will be prohibited in the United States.
Tiktok confirmed to the agency France-Presse (AFP) that the US government had recommended the sale of the application by its owner.
Washington “has so far had no evidence that Tiktok was threatening national security in the United States,” a spokesman for Chinese diplomacy, Wang Wenbin on Wednesday. “The United States should stop disseminating false information on data security issues, stop unjustified attacks [against Tiktok] and provide an open, fair, fair and non-discriminatory commercial environment” to foreign companies, added the Word.