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Due to security fears, many countries have banned Tiktok, the famous Chinese social media app, from being downloaded on government-issued mobile devices. Politicians in countries like the US, UK, and Australia do not favour the app. However, many consumers are now seeking further details on the direction of the Albanese government.
TikTok was launched in 2016 and has grown exponentially in popularity, gaining billions of active users globally. There are millions of users in western countries, which makes its governments suspicious that the app is a gateway to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in illegally mining the data of its users.
According to Anton Dahbura, executive director of John Hopkins University Information Security Institute, “the biggest issue is that users are largely unaware of the risks of foreign governments using their user data. People would be shocked about how our trails of breadcrumbs from our mobile devices and other platforms can be used in different ways that can threaten national security.”
US republican lawmakers have begun to push for the TikTok ban bill, where the app will be banned from being downloaded on government-issued mobile devices. This move is similarly reflected in countries like Canada, Taiwan, the UK, and recently in Australia and New Zealand.
Clare O’Neil, the minister for home affairs and cybersecurity, investigated the possibility of offshore data harvesting that the app may have been doing last year. However, “there is increasing behind-the-scenes frustration in sections of the industry over which platforms are national security fit for marketing content and which are not.”
The investigation was motivated partly by the recent cyberattacks the country experienced with Medibank and Optus. Many critical infrastructure providers in the country have already complied with the ban, steering away from using TikTok as a marketing platform.
New Zealand has also started banning the app from being downloaded on mobile devices connecting to the country’s parliamentary network. The government has expressed similar fears that the app may harvest data that the CCP can use.
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