France to Ban TikTok on Work Phones of Civil Servants

France may become the latest addition to the list of countries that have banned the Chinese video-sharing app TikTok from government devices for privacy and cybersecurity concerns, reported France 24.

French Civil Service Minister Stanislas Guerini on Friday announced that France would ban the use of the Chinese-owned video-sharing app, TikTok, on the work phones of civil servants. “In order to guarantee the cybersecurity of our administrations and civil servants, the government has decided to ban recreational applications such as TikTok on the professional phones of civil servants,” he tweeted.

A string of governments and institutions including the UK parliament, the Dutch and Belgian administrations and the New Zealand parliament have banned TikTok in recent weeks,.

India too imposed a nationwide ban on TikTok and dozens of other Chinese apps, including the messaging app WeChat, in 2020.

TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew was grilled by US lawmakers on Thursday, which reflected a growing penchant to ban the app from the US over its ties to China and handling of user data.

TikTok is bound by China’s National Intelligence Law, which compels every Chinese citizen and company to surrender all data to the Chinese Communist Party on request and perform surveillance activities on behalf of the CCP. TikTok, like many other social media companies, collects users’ personal information, including phone numbers, email addresses, contacts and Wi-Fi networks.