NATO officially banned its employees from downloading and using the TikTok app on Alliance-provided devices, citing security concerns, according to two officials with knowledge of the matter who spoke to CNN.
On Friday morning, NATO officials sent a message to staff announcing the ban. The memo marked a formal ban on the platform, sources said, although TikTok could no longer be used on NATO-supplied devices due to technological limitations.
“Cyber security is a top priority for NATO. NATO has strict requirements for defining applications for official use. TikTok is not accessible from NATO devices,” a senior NATO official told CNN.
NATO is the latest organization to ban the app amid concerns over the Chinese government’s potential access to TikTok user data through its Chinese parent company Bytedance. The US, UK, Norway and other states have already banned the app on government devices.. A similar decision was made by the European Parliament.
TikTok CEO Show Chu told the US Congress that the company is completely independent of any influence from Beijing, arguing that he has not seen any evidence that the Chinese government had access to the data. “They never asked us, we never gave,” he added, saying that TikTok is moving its data to the US to be stored on American soil by Oracle.
Source: CNN
Source: Kathimerini
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