After the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, it is the turn of the France to take action against certain applications such as TikTok or Netflix. The French government has decided to ban them on the professional phones of civil servants, the Ministry of Transformation and Public Service said Friday (March 24th) in a statement.
This decision was taken "to guarantee the cybersecurity of our administrations and our public officials," Minister Stanislas Guérini said on Twitter.
The ban, which applies promptly and uniformly, also targets streaming apps like Netflix, games like Candy Crush and other so-called recreational apps like Instagram, Snapchat and Tinder, a ministry spokesman told Reuters.
The United States, Canada, Belgium, New Zealand and the European Commission have already banned the use of the TikTok application on business phones.
Recreational apps like TikTok are now banned, with immediate effect, on all phones the state provides to agents publics.@StanGuerini pic.twitter.com/3KMA6BercF
— Jean-Noël Barrot (@jnbarrot) March 24, 2023
Suspicions
The Chinese video-sharing app is coming under increasing scrutiny due to fears that user data from the app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance could end up in the hands of the Chinese government, accusations the group denies.
The CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, was heard Thursday by the US Congress, while many parliamentarians are convinced of the need to ban the application in the United States.
China's Foreign Ministry said Friday that China attaches great importance to data privacy and security.
Beijing has never requested, and will never ask, a company to provide data or intelligence located in foreign countries, a ministry official said.
With AFP
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