TikTok banned on mobile devices issued by US House of Representatives

TikTok banned on mobile devices issued by US House of Representatives. According to an internal document that was obtained by NBC News, the United States House of Representatives has given its personnel the directive to uninstall the app TikTok from any House-issued mobile phones. According to reports, Catherine L. Szpindor, the top administrative officer of the House, is the one who issued the regulation, which prohibits the popular social media app from being downloaded on devices that are issued by the House moving forward.

Because there is a lack of openness surrounding how TikTok’s Chinese parent firm, ByteDance, handles consumer data, the Office of Cybersecurity under the CAO is of the opinion that the platform poses a “high danger to customers.” The memo stated that members of the House staff were not permitted to instal the TikTok app on any mobile device owned by the House. You will be requested to uninstall the TikTok app from your House mobile device if you currently have it installed there.

TikTok has already been outlawed on devices given by the government in 19 states, according to local governments.

TikTok spokeswoman Brooke Oberwetter told The Wall Street Journal that the move was more of a political signal than a realistic remedy for security issues. She also claimed that the ban will have no impact because relatively few phones managed by the House have TikTok loaded.

The regulation is the latest in a series of previous measures to limit how TikTok can be used in the United States out of concerns that the Chinese government could use the app to spy on and monitor individuals located within the country. The local administrations in 19 states have already banned TikTok on government-owned devices, citing security concerns. The omnibus spending bill that was passed by Congress on December 23rd contains language that bans the app on phones issued to employees of agencies in the executive branch, with exceptions made for law enforcement, national security, and research purposes. The bill has a total cost of $1.7 trillion.

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TikTok is in the process of negotiating a settlement with the Justice Department to address the department’s concerns over matters of national security.

TikTok has consistently and vehemently denied that the way it handles user data is a cause for concern. The company claims that data pertaining to users in the United States is not held in China and that the Chinese government does not have access to this information. After the passage of the funding measure by Congress the previous week, the business issued a statement in which it made the commitment to “meaningfully address any security issues that have been expressed at both the federal and state level.”

Many members of Congress can be found using the app TikTok; however, despite the fact that politicians and staffers working for the House are now compelled to deactivate the app, this instruction does not yet extend to the Senate. Recently, a number of lawmakers, including Marco Rubio (R-FL), have advocated for the elimination of TikTok in its entirety across the United States.

If TikTok wants to succeed in persuading the United States government that the platform can be relied upon, it has its job cut out for it. An internal investigation was conducted by ByteDance on the 23rd of December and discovered that several employees had accessed the TikTok data of US journalists. This was discovered despite ByteDance’s previous assertion that it has never been used to target specific individuals, such as members of the US government or journalists.