France will prohibit civil servants from using the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok on their work phones, Civil Service Minister Stanislas Guerini announced on Twitter.
“In order to ensure the cybersecurity of our administrations and civil servants, the government has decided to prohibit recreational applications such as TikTok on civil servants’ professional phones,” he said in a statement.
He went on to say that for several weeks, several of France’s European and international partners have taken steps to restrict or prohibit their administrations from downloading and installing the TikTok application.
Guerini stated that recreational applications lack adequate levels of cybersecurity and data protection to be deployed on administrations’ equipment and that the ban is effective immediately, with government services monitoring compliance.
He stated that exceptions can be made for professional reasons, such as an administration’s institutional communication.
TikTok has been banned by a number of Western governments and institutions in recent weeks, including the UK parliament, the Dutch and Belgian governments, and the New Zealand parliament.
TikTok was banned from staff phones by the European Union’s two largest policymaking institutions, the Commission and the Council, late last month for cybersecurity reasons.
Concerns have grown around the world about the Chinese government’s ability to access users’ location and contact information via ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company.
