The European Comission banned its employees from installing the Chinese app TikTok on their official mobile phones before March 15, alleging reasons of “security“, like the United States Congress has done with its workers.
«The Corporate Board of Directors of the commission has decided to discontinue the use of the application mobile TikTok on their official devices,” said Sonya Gospodinova, spokesperson for the Community Executive.
The decision has been “carefully considered” and has been adopted for “protect the European Commission against threats to cybersecurity and against actions that can be exploited against carrying out attacks.” although he avoided giving details about whether he has There has been a specific attack that has motivated the ban.
It is a measurebased on the assessment that the European Commission has made of the situation and we are not going to give more details. said the spokesman head of the institution Eric Mamerwho stated that the institution receives cyberattacks “on a regular basis”, although he avoided giving further explanations for security reasons.
“From the beginning of the mandate, the European Commission has had a strong interest in cybersecurity.” said the European Commissioner Internal Market, Thierry Breton.
Brussels, however, will review “constantly” the measure, so in the future it could be «reversible,” Gospodinova said.
TikTok considered, for his part, that this suspension “is wrong and is based on concepts fundamental errors,” a company spokesman told EFE.
Ban on Zoom video calls
“We are surprised that the Commission have not contacted us directly nor has he offered us any explanation: we have requested a meeting to set the record straight, about how we protect data from 125 million of people andacross the EU who visit TikTok every month”, toadded the spokesman.
In addition to TikTok, the Commission banned and the application of Zoom video calls, but it does allow other similar ones like Skype for Business or Webex.
Following the decision adopted by the Executive community today about it, the European Parliament is “evaluating all possible data breaches related to the mobile application» of TikTok, before taking any action, a spokesman for the European Parliament told EFE.
Brussels has been focusing its attention on TikTok and the rest of the big technology companies, and in this context, in January he met with the CEO from the Chinese company Shou Zi Chewwho threatened with prohibiting its use in the European Union if it does not prevent minors have access to potentially deadly videos» and if it does not prevent user data are ceded to third countries.
The European Commission follow the steps like this USAwhere Congress has banned legislators and their employees who install the application on their official phones.
A measure that they have also adopted several States, among them Texas, Alabama or Tennessee, as well as other institutions such as the University of Florida.
The controversy in the US on the use of the Chinese application has worsened after the recent revelation that bytedancethe company that owns of TikTok, used the social network to spy on journalists.