The European Fee (EC) has ordered its workers to uninstall the favored Chinese language-owned social media app TikTok from company units, explaining the transfer as essential to bolster cybersecurity.

To guard the EC’s information and enhance its cybersecurity, its administration board has “determined to droop the TikTok software on company units and private units enrolled within the Fee cell gadget providers,” in accordance with a press release posted by the physique on Thursday.

Staffers have till mid-March to conform or else lose entry to their EC e mail and Skype for Enterprise apps, EURACTIV reported, citing an IT e mail despatched to employees.

A TikTok spokesperson advised EURACTIV that the ban is “misguided and primarily based on basic misconceptions” concerning the social media platform. The spokesperson stated the corporate had “contacted the Fee to set the report straight and clarify how we defend the info of the 125 million individuals throughout the EU who come to TikTok each month.”

Final month, a bunch of Republican lawmakers within the US launched the ‘No TikTok on United States Units Act’, which seeks to ban the platform on all units within the nation. One of many invoice’s authors, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), argued on the time that the app “opens the door for the Chinese language Communist Get together to entry Individuals’ private data, keystrokes, and site by aggressive information harvesting.”

In December 2022, Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered state companies to “remove all cybersecurity dangers posed by TikTok” and prohibited the usage of the app on government-provided units. Reviews on the time instructed that lawmakers and employees on the US Home of Representatives had additionally been instructed to uninstall the app from any company units.

FBI Director Christopher Wray stated throughout a Home Homeland Safety Committee listening to final yr that the company had “nationwide safety issues” about TikTok, together with the “risk that the Chinese language authorities might use it to regulate information assortment on thousands and thousands of customers, or management the advice algorithm.”

Commenting on the allegations on the time, Chinese language International Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning accused US officers of “spreading disinformation” in a bid to discredit a big Chinese language agency competing with Western social media giants.

ByteDance, the dad or mum firm of TikTok, additionally dismissed claims that it ever deliberate to trace Individuals.