The Chinese Tiktok application opens up the possibility of spying and eavesdropping. In Finland, the Tiktok shepherd’s letter went out to the ministries last August.
Several countries have joined the ranks of smokers of the Chinese social media app Tiktok. Today, Canada and Denmark banned the Tiktok app from government work phones and other devices.
Yesterday, the White House banned the use of the app on the devices of US government agencies. Government officials were given a month to remove Tiktok from work devices.
Congress had already passed a banning decision on Tiktok. Now the White House issued a deadline for when the authorities must remove the application and prevent its download and use.
The European Commission banned the Tiktok application last week. In addition to its own devices, the Commission’s ban also applies to officials’ personal devices on which they have also downloaded the Commission’s own applications.
Tiktok must disappear from the Commission’s machines by mid-March.
Finland caught on last summer
The justification of all those who have gone down the path of the ban has been that they want to protect their own data and increase cyber security.
In Finland, the issue was already raised in August of last year. At that time, the Cabinet of Ministers issued an instruction to remove the Tiktok application from the work phones and computers of the Cabinet and ministries.
– At that time, there were some users among a total of 5,000–6,000 people, industry director of the Government Office Max Hamberg says.
A broad Tiktok ban for all government agencies has not been issued. In the state administration, it is believed that the office holders themselves understand that not all applications are harmless from the point of view of information security.
Tiktok enables spying
The data security of the social media service developed by the Chinese technology company Bytedance worries the authorities of Western countries. Tiktok is estimated to enable spying and data mining.
It is feared that the sensitive information will eventually end up in the hands of the Chinese government. Another fear is that the app opens a direct route for China to spread its propaganda.
A Tiktok user is automatically exposed to the exploitation of his data when he follows a link displayed in the application to a site. The link inevitably opens in Tiktok’s own browser, and not, for example, in Chrome or Safari, which the owner of the phone normally uses to visit websites.
China blames oppression
Information security experts who have studied Tiktok’s operating logic say that it is possible for Tiktok to track every screen tap or text typed on the keyboard by its users.
Thus, Tiktok is thought to be able to get its users’ credit card information or passwords, for example.
The Chinese company Bytedance has repeatedly denied using the Tiktok application for spying and snooping.
China’s foreign ministry has been angered by US Tiktok bans. In China’s opinion, the United States wants to unnecessarily suppress the activities of foreign companies in its country.
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