TikTok: Social media app banned on UK government issued phones
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You may have heard people talking about TikTok recently.
The popular Chinese-owned social media app has been banned on official phones and other devices used by UK government ministers and their staff over what TikTok does with the data it collects from the people who use it.
The news comes after several other governments including the United States, Canada and Belgium have taken similar action.
TikTok though strongly denies claims that it gives users' data to the Chinese government.
What have the UK government announced?
The UK government have announced that TikTok has now been banned from phones and other devices issued to government ministers and civil servants.
Government Minister Oliver Dowden told MPs that the app would be banned on security grounds with immediate effect, describing it as a "precautionary" move, following a review by the National Cyber Security Centre.
Mr Dowden said: "The security of sensitive government information must come first".
But he told MPs that the ban would not apply to their personal phones, or to the general public, because this was a response to a "specific risk with government devices".
The platform gets to know a lot about you. It records how long you watch a particular video for, which ones you comment on or favourite. If you have an account it also knows your age, your location and your device, and it even monitors your typing rhythms. Its cookies track your activity elsewhere on the net. It is true that other huge social networks do the same thing.
The UK Parliament closed down its TikTok account last August after MPs raised concerns about the risk of data being passed to the Chinese government.
However other government departments and ministers such as the Ministry of Defence and Energy Secretary Grant Shapps, have recently updated their pages.
UK government ministers had come under pressure from senior MPs to follow the US and the European Commission, who have both banned the app from official devices.
Canada and Belgium have taken similar action, whilst in India the app was been completely banned in the whole country by their government in 2020.
What has TikTok said?
Like most other social media companies, TikTok collects huge amounts of data on its users, such as their location and what other apps they have.
However, because TikTok is owned by the Beijing-based tech company ByteDance, there have been concerns it could pass information on to the Chinese government.
"The Chinese state demands loyalty from all businesses based in the country and nobody really knows to what extent ByteDance might be pushed to comply with demands for data," explained ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ technology editor Zoe Kleinman.
The Chinese authorities and Bytedance have both denied widely misusing data and the company maintains it operates no differently from other social media companies.
TikTok has has said it does not share data with Chinese officials and that bans were based on "misplaced fears" driven by wider arguments between some countries and with China.
Could TikTok be be banned for everyone?
WATCH: What's going on with TikTok? (2020)
Some countries, such as India have a full ban on TikTok and it is blocked in the country.
In America, a ban on the TikTok app was first threatened under then-President Donald Trump in 2020.
However the government of, his successor, President Biden, seems also to take a dim view of the social network.
A new law called the Restrict Act is designed to allow the US to ban it if it chose to.
The app's boss Shou Zi Chew, is expected to give evidence to US politicians next week.
There's no suggestion yet that it could be banned altogether in the UK and Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said: "We do advise individuals to practise caution online and to consider each social media platform's data policies before downloading and using them."