Belgian federal authorities workers will now not be allowed to make use of the Chinese-owned video app TikTok on their work telephones, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo mentioned on Friday.
De Croo mentioned the Belgian nationwide safety council had warned of the dangers related to the big quantities of knowledge collected by TikTok, which is owned by Chinese agency ByteDance, and the truth that the corporate is required to cooperate with Chinese intelligence providers.
“That is the reality,” the prime minister mentioned in a press release.
“That’s why it is logical to forbid the use of TikTok on phones provided by the federal government. The safety of our information must prevail.”
TikTok in a press release mentioned it was dissatisfied with a call it mentioned was based mostly on “fundamentally wrong information”.
The firm mentioned it shops consumer information in the US and Singapore and is constructing information facilities in Europe.
“The Chinese government can’t force other sovereign nations to share data that is stored in their territory,” a spokesman for the corporate mentioned.
The European Commission and the European Parliament final month banned TikTok from employees telephones because of rising issues concerning the firm, and whether or not China’s authorities might harvest customers’ information or advance its pursuits.
Beijing has repeatedly denied having any such intentions.
Belgium’s Flemish regional authorities on Thursday introduced it might limit entry to TikTok on employees telephones, and different regional governments had been urged by De Croo to use the identical guidelines.
The video-sharing app has already been banned from work telephones in US and Canada, whereas it has been fully banned in India.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
