We have bad news for US government employees who enjoy creating and watching TikTok videos.
The Committee on House Administration (COA) has notified staff that the app can no longer be installed on House-managed mobile devices.
According to an email sent to the department’s employees, the Office of Cybersecurity deemed the TikTok mobile application high risk due to severalurity concerns.
An absolute ban
COA Office of Cybersecurity will contact anyone working in the lower chamber who does not immediately remove the app from their devices.
Other organizations within the US government will also be subject to the ban shortly. As part of the recent $1.66 trillion omnibus spending bill, which now awaits the approval of President Biden, a more comprehensive ban on the installation of the now-infamous app is included.
Recently, TikTok has gained tremendous popularity and is now considered the leading social media platform in the world. Nevertheless, it is owned and operated by ByteDance, a Chinese software company. As a result of China’s policy regarding privacy, data management, and human rights, it soon drew scrutiny from the United States government.
Accordingly, in 2020, former president Donald Trump issued an executive order banning US companies from transacting with TikTok.
In an attempt to keep data generated on-premises and protected from possible exfiltration by the Chinese government, the Trump administration even attempted to force the company to sell its US operations to a domestic buyer.
Although both the company and the Chinese government denied any data misuse, ByteDance confirmed earlier this month that its employees accessed journalist data to determine who leaked certain information.
Furthermore, the company confirmed last summer that Chinese employees had access to US user data.