France joins a growing list of states that say TikTok lacks sufficient levels of cybersecurity and data protection.
France has banned the “recreational” use of TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and other apps on government employees’ phones because of concerns about insufficient data security measures.
The ban is to come into force immediately, the Ministry of Public Sector Transformation and the Civil Service wrote on Twitter on Friday.
“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,” Stanislas Guerini said on Friday.
He added that for several weeks, several of France’s European and international partners have adopted measures to restrict or ban the downloading and installation of or the use of the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok by their administrations.
Concerns regarding alleged security risks posed by TikTok have most prominently been raised by US lawmakers and national security officials who say that user data gathered by the app could be accessed by the Chinese government.
Calls to ban TikTok from government devices gained momentum after FBI Director Christopher Wray said in November it poses national security risks.
Late last month, the European Union’s two biggest policy-making institutions – the Commission and the Council – banned TikTok from staff phones for cybersecurity reasons.