Australia bans TikTok from federal government devices

Australia has become the last of the Five Eyes security partners to ban the Chineseowned videosharing app TikTok from its federal governments devicesAttorneyGeneral Mark Dreyfus said in a statement on Tuesday that based on intelligence and security agencies advice that ban would come into effect as soon as practicableThe socalled Five Eyes intelligencesharing partners the United States Canada Britain and New Zealand have taken similar stepsTikTok objected to the decisionWe are extremely disappointed by this decision which in our view is driven by politics not by fact the companys general manager for Australia Lee Hunter said in a statement Again we stress that there is no evidence to suggest that TikTok is in any way a security risk to Australians and should not be treated differently to other social media platformsHe urged the Australian government to treat all businesses fairly regardless of country of originWestern governments are worried that TikTok poses risks to cybersecurity and data privacy and that the app could be used to promote proBeijing narratives and misinformationAlso readMunitions antitank rockets in next 26 billion US pledge for Ukraine OfficialsTikTok is owned by the Chinese technology company Bytedance and has long maintained that it does not share data with the Chinese government It is carrying out a project to store US user data on Oracle servers which it says will put the information out of Chinas reachThe company has disputed accusations it collects more user data than other social media companies and insists that it is run independently by its own managementThe European Parliament European Commission and the EU Council the 27member blocs three main institutions have also imposed bans on TikTok on staff devicesUnder the European Parliaments ban which took effect last month lawmakers and staff were also advised to remove the TikTok app from their personal devicesIndia imposed a nationwide ban on TikTok and dozens of other Chinese apps including the messaging app WeChat in 2020 over privacy and security concerns The ban came shortly after a clash between Indian and Chinese troops at a disputed Himalayan border killed 20 Indian soldiers and injured dozensIn early March the US gave government agencies 30 days to delete TikTok from federal devices and systems The ban applies only to government devices though some US lawmakers are advocating an outright banChina has lashed out at the US for banning TikTok saying it is an abuse of state power and is suppressing companies from other countriesMore than half of the 50 US states also have banned the app from official devices as have Congress and the US armed forcesThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever