Tech

The European Commission bans TikTok on official devices

There is no doubt that TikTok is, today, the social network with the highest level of predicament among the youngest. The short video format, an algorithm that is usually quite successful when it comes to choosing which publications to go viral, and all the consumer culture that has been generated around the platform have made it the preferred choice of the most popular audiences. young people, a succulent portion of a market that other services, such as Facebook, constantly aspire to be able to sink their teeth into.

Your degree of influence has an inversely proportional relationship with the age of potential usersbut the change goes from being gradual to exponential if the adults in question are responsible for the security of public institutions, either on this side of the pond or on the other side of the pond, since on both shores this apparently innocent social network is observed as a real threat to the privacy of users and the security of companies and institutions.

This has a very simple explanation, and that is that we must remember that TikTok is a service that belongs to ByteDance, an Internet technology company based in Beijing and legally domiciled in the Cayman Islands. In other words, it is a Chinese company and, therefore, it must comply with Beijing’s policies, which, as is well known, claim the right to access the data of corporations operating in the country. even more so those that have their origin in it.

The European Commission bans TikTok on official devices

Thus, a few months ago we learned that both the United States federal government and some of the country’s state governments had decided to veto the service on the official devices of their workers, a measure that was strongly criticized by ByteDance. It seems, however, that this was only a first step in this direction, since today The European Commission has decided to ban TikTok on official devices of employees of the European institutionas we can see in the official communiqué of the Commission, in which we can also read the following:

«This measure aims to protect the Commission against cybersecurity threats and actions that can be exploited for cyberattacks against the Commission’s corporate environment.»

We must remember the key role of the European Commission as the executive arm of the European Union, responsible for proposing and enforcing legislation and for executing the EU budget. What I mean by this? Well two things, actually. The first is that, given its fundamental role in the EU, it seems quite sensible to hedge against risks of this type, whether or not there is evidence that TikTok is used by the Chinese government to spy on European officials. And the second is that it seems quite probable that this measure can be quickly extended to other European bodiesas well as the national institutions of the countries integrated into the union.

Now officials have a term that expires on March 15 to proceed to uninstall TikTok from all your official devices. The European Commission affirms that this measure is temporary and that it is “under constant review and possible re-evaluation«, although in the press conference that took place to announce this veto it was indicated that the measures that the European Commission expects of ByteDance to lift the veto of TikTok on official devices were not going to be disseminated, at least in that context.

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