TikTok faces review by UK cybersecurity watchdog

14 Mar 2023

Image: © diy13/Stock.adobe.com

The move follows decisions by Canada, the US and the European Commission to ban the app on government devices over data surveillance fears.

The UK has become the latest country to investigate security concerns surrounding TikTok and its data collection practices, according to one of its ministers.

UK security minister Tom Tugendhat told Sky News that he has asked the National Cyber Security Centre to review whether the app should be banned on government devices.

The move follows growing fears worldwide that TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, may be providing private user data from around the world to the Chinese government for surveillance purposes.

“Understanding exactly what the challenges that these apps pose, what they are asking for and how they’re reaching into our lives is incredibly important,” Tugendhat told Sky News. “That’s why I’ve asked the National Cyber Security Centre to look into this.”

In the interview, Tugendhat noted that different countries have had “different approaches” for handling the security concerns surrounding TikTok.

Last month, Canada banned TikTok from its government-issued mobile devices as a “precaution”, noting that the app’s data collection methods provide “considerable access” to the contents of the phone it is installed on.

At around the same time, the White House ordered US federal agencies to start removing the TikTok app from their IT systems. This followed a decision last November by the US state of South Dakota to ban the use of TikTok for government staff due to the “growing national security threat” posed by the platform.

TikTok also caused concern in the EU last November when it confirmed that employees in China and a host of other countries have remote access to European user data. Until then, it was believed data was only stored in Singapore and the US.

Last month, the European Commission asked all employees to delete the TikTok app from devices provided by the organisation by 15 March.

In response to these security concerns, TikTok recently announced Project Clover, which is a new set of measures to protect European user data.

These measures include storing the user data of more than 150m monthly European users within the continent through the creation of two data centres in Dublin and one in the Hamar region of Norway.

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Leigh Mc Gowran is a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com