Britain announced it would ban TikTok on government phones with immediate effect, a move following other Western countries that have banned the Chinese-owned video app on security grounds.
TikTok is coming under increasing scrutiny amid fears that user data from the app owned by Beijing-based company ByteDance could end up in the hands of the Chinese government, undermining Western security interests.
“Security of confidential government information must come first, so today we are banning this app on government devices. The use of other data mining applications will remain under review,” Cabinet Office Minister Oliver Dowden said in a statement.
The British government asked the National Center for Cyber Security to look into the potential vulnerability of government data from social media apps, the risks around how sensitive information could be accessed and used.