OUR Australia prohibits the installation and use of the Application and the Platform tik tak Chinese company ByteDance in government devices, after a number of similar solutions in Western countries for security reasons, Australian Justice Minister Mark Dreyfus said today.

The decision was based on the advice of Australian intelligence and will be implemented “As soon as possible”said Mr. Dreyfus.

According to Mr. Dreyfus, they will be provided exceptions only on an individual basis and with the use of security measures.

With this solution, all participants in the network, known by the name five eyes (Australia, Canada, USA, UK, New Zealand) banned the installation of the application on government devices. France, Belgium and the European Commission have also announced similar measures.

What are Western governments afraid of?

TikTok, with over a billion active users worldwide, ranks sixth among of the most used social networking sites, no later than exhibition “We are sociable” on the evolution of digital services, published in January.

Western governments say Beijing could use company data control users or to promote their political agenda.

Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have warned that ByteDance may be sharing TikTok user data.

In particular, there are concerns that the company is sending users’ personal data en masse to Beijing in violation of strict European privacy regulations.

What does tiktok say

In November, TikTok acknowledged that some of its workers in China they may have access to about the data of European users, and in December that its employees used the data to track journalists.

But the company operating the platform categorically refuses that there is any access and any control by the Chinese government to this data.

“The TikTok ban on U.S. federal devices was passed in December without any consultation, and unfortunately this approach has served as a model for other governments. These bans are more than political theatre,” Brooke Oberwetter said after this latest event.

TikTok’s management also complains that it has not been given a chance to respond to these complaints, accusing governments of disconnecting their citizens from such a popular social media platform.

^{According to Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, APE – MEB}

⇒ News today

Subscribe to kathimerini.gr on Google News and be the first to know all the news

See all the latest news from Greece and the world at kathimerini.gr