France Bans TikTok On Civil Servants' Devices - Public Sector Transformation Minister

The French government has banned the installation and use of "entertainment applications," including the Chinese TikTok, on devices used by government officials in effort to prevent security breach, Minister of Public Sector Transformation and Service Stanislas Guerini said on Friday

PARIS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th March, 2023) The French government has banned the installation and use of "entertainment applications," including the Chinese TikTok, on devices used by government officials in effort to prevent security breach, Minister of Public Sector Transformation and Service Stanislas Guerini said on Friday.

"After the analysis of the problems, in security for instance, the government has decided to ban downloading and using Chinese TikTok application on service phones from now," the document posted by Guerini on his social media said.

�"Entertainment applications" do not have a proper level of cyber defense and data safety to use them on the devices of government officials as they pose a security threat, the ministry's document read.

The ban is applied to all government employees effective immediately. Exceptions could be made in cases when the applications are for "professional needs," the statement said.

�The France Info tv channel reported that the ban will affect TikTok, Twitter and Instagram (banned in Russia as an extremist organization) on 2.

5 million French public servants' devices. If a specific list of the banned apps is not set, the prohibition may involve three major application categories: entertaining, gaming and streaming, such as Netflix, the France Info said citing a government source.

On March 1, French government spokesman Olivier Veran said that French President Emmanuel Macron and all ministers had abandoned the use of Chinese video-sharing app TikTok on their work phones due to security concerns about user data being accessed by the Chinese government.

A similar TikTok access prohibition was adopted in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and several states of the US. Restrictions on the access to TikTok from corporate devices were also imposed in the European Commission, the European Parliament and in the Council of the European Union.

TikTok is an application for short videos hosting owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.�It was launched in 2018. According to its CEO Shou Zi Chew, the application is used by over 100 million people in the US alone.