TikTok‘s just landed itself another ban, with the UK planning to block the app from all government devices.
Following reviews by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, the government is expected to announce the ban on all smartphones, laptops, desktops, and other devices used by ministers and civil servants, the BBC reported Thursday(Opens in a new tab).
While the government hasn’t officially announced the ban, the BBC says cabinet office minister Oliver Dowden will confirm it later today.
The move follows similar bans or possible bans in other countries including Belgium(Opens in a new tab) and Canada(Opens in a new tab), following allegations of data collection by TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, which has ties to the Chinese government — ByteDance has long denied these claims. At the start of March, the European Commission banned TikTok from staff devices. The U.S. is currently moving to ban the app in several ways, with TikTok banned on government-owned devices in December and bills in the House of Representatives and Senate proposing to ban TikTok on some university wifi systems. (Here’s everything you need to know about the U.S. TikTok bans.)
This story is developing…
