United States: Earlier in March, the President Joe Biden’s administration told government agencies that they have 30 days to delete the app from federal devices and systems. Prohibiting its use on federal service devices is common sense.”ĭenmark: The declaration prohibiting “the use of the app on official units” came on March 6 in Denmark after the Defence Ministry, in a statement, said that its Centre for Cyber Security - which is part of the country’s foreign intelligence service - had assessed there was a risk of espionage. “We must not be naive: TikTok is a Chinese company which today is obliged to cooperate with the intelligence services. In a statement, Cabinet Office minister Oliver Dowden said that, following a review by Britain’s cybersecurity experts, it is “clear that there could be a risk around how sensitive government data is accessed and used by certain platforms.”Īlso read in Explained | Iran-Saudi deal: What the gambit can mean for China, West Asia, and India United Kingdom: On Thursday, the officials of the United Kingdom said that they are prohibiting the application on government phones with immediate effect. The agency’s Director Chris Wray at the time claimed that the Chinese had the ability to control the app’s recommendation algorithm, “which allows them to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations.” Countries that have banned the use of TikTok The latest set of bans by numerous countries has come just a couple of months after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in December last year raised national security concerns about TikTok.

However, the company has denied the allegations and said that it is run independently by its own management, Time magazine reported.

In recent years, TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company Bytedance, has been facing the heat as several government agencies and experts have accused it of sharing user data - such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers - with the Chinese government.

Tik tok ban