Authored by Thomas Brooke by way of Remix Information,

The European Fee has banned its staff from utilizing the TikTok social media app over safety considerations amid allegations of knowledge sharing by the app’s guardian firm with the Chinese language authorities.

The 32,000-strong workforce of the European Union’s govt arm will probably be prohibited beginning March 15 from having the app put in on their enterprise units and any private machine upon which enterprise software program, equivalent to work e-mails, is put in.

“To extend its cybersecurity, the Fee’s Company Administration Board has determined to droop the usage of the TikTok software on its company units and on private units enrolled within the Fee cellular machine service,” the fee stated in an announcement on Thursday.

The announcement comes amid allegations that ByteDance, the Chinese language-owned guardian firm of the social media platform, has been harvesting customers’ knowledge and handing it to the Chinese language authorities, an allegation the corporate has strongly denied.

“We’re dissatisfied with this choice, which we imagine to be misguided and based mostly on basic misconceptions,” a ByteDance spokesperson stated.

The corporate stated it had contacted the fee “to set the report straight and clarify how we defend the information of the 125 million individuals throughout the EU who come to TikTok each month.”

The transfer follows comparable motion taken by the U.S. federal authorities final yr to ban the app on federal units citing nationwide safety considerations.

The Overseas Affairs Committee of the U.S. Home of Representatives is predicted to carry a vote subsequent month on laws searching for to impose a nationwide ban on the social media app throughout the US, a ban initially floated throughout Donald Trump’s presidency.