US House of Representatives members are no longer allowed to use the app on their official smartphones for fear of security risks.
The rule, introduced by the House administration, comes a week after the US Senate voted on legislation to ban TikTok from the work phones of all government officials. In both cases, elected officials fear that the app could pose a security risk. So instead, they usually aim for espionage.
TikTok is an app from the Chinese company ByteDance with a reputation for data gathering. For example, the company would not shy away from using IP data from the app to track down journalists.
The app has therefore been under fire for some time. It is currently negotiating with the US government about the security of user data, for example, about storing American data on servers in that country without Chinese employees having access to it.
Incidentally, data from European users will be stored in a data centre in Ireland from next year (they are currently located in the US and Singapore). A series of privacy investigations are also underway in Europe against the company, including for forwarding data to Chinese employees.
