In a recent request to all European Commission employees, the EU’s IT service has asked that all employees of the EU executive uninstall Chinese-owned TikTok from their corporate devices, as well as their personal devices that are using corporate apps, citing data protection concerns. It was reported to reporters by Thierry Breton, the Commissioner of the Internal Markets, that he had spoken to the CEO of TikTok Shou Zi Chew about concerns about the video-sharing app’s data privacy.
In his words, “We are very active…to ensure that we’re protecting our colleagues,” he said.
In an email sent to officials on Thursday morning, EURACTIV reported that officials received the request via email.
As stated in the email:
It has been decided by the European Commission (EC) Corporate Management Board, for the sake of protecting the data of the Commission and increasing its cybersecurity, that the TikTok application will be suspended on both corporate and personal devices that are enrolled in the Commission mobile device services.
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The staff members were advised to complete this task as soon as possible and by the 15th of March at the latest.
As a result, the company responded by stating that a decision by the European Commission to ban the video-sharing app from its staff’s official devices was the result of a misunderstanding of how the platform works.
“We are disappointed with this decision, which we believe is misguided and based on fundamental misconceptions that we believe are totally unfounded,” a spokesperson for the Chinese-owned company said in a statement.
TikTok Under Scrutiny
A Chinese company called ByteDance is the parent company of TikTok, which has already faced calls for a ban in the US due to its links with Beijing, and it is now being closely scrutinized in the EU over its ties to China as well.
There has been a recent accusation against the platform by top officials of the bloc that it fails to resolve problems related to data, copyright, and access to harmful content, among others.
It was revealed last November that TikTok’s Chinese headquarters had been able to access the personal data of users all across the world. ByteDance was later forced to confirm that it had obtained TikTok data from ByteDance staff in order to identify a source of leaks to the media, and that this data was being used to track journalists.
As far as the Chinese government is concerned, the company denies that it has any access to or control over it.
It has recently been banned on government devices in the United States both at the state and federal level, and some lawmakers want to completely ban the platform as well.
Nevertheless, a spokesman for the European Commission said that the decision to ask its employees to remove TikTok from their corporate phones had not been influenced by any pressure from the United States.
Ulrich Kelber, Germany’s Data Protection Commissioner, demanded on Wednesday that the federal government stop operating its Facebook page in order to protect data privacy. Apparently, Kelber was not satisfied with the fact that the page fulfilled all of the requirements for data protection when he made his decision.
