Public servants advised to remove TikTok from work devices

Chinese-owned TikTok has come under fire in the US, Europe and Asia, where a growing number of governments have banned the app from devices used for official business over worries it poses risks to cybersecurity and data privacy

Public servants have been advised not to use TikTok on work phones because security threats from China cannot be ruled out.

Amid concerns that information is shared with Chinese authorities, Government ministers, civil servants, and State employees have been asked to delete the video-sharing app from their phones and other devices.

The guidance from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) comes after weeks of scrutiny around the app’s collection of data and applies to all devices unless there is “an exceptional business need” for it to be installed.

Chinese-owned TikTok has come under fire in the US, Europe, and Asia, where a growing number of governments have banned it from devices used for official business over worries it poses risks to cybersecurity and data privacy, or that it could be used to push pro-Beijing narratives and misinformation.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the Government had no choice but to follow the advice, though the fact that TikTok is a large employer here should be “recognised”.

“It is something that can be reversed,” he said.

“TikTok is a big investor in Ireland — it employs a lot of people and I think it is important to recognise that. But we have to take the advice of the cybersecurity experts on this.” NCSC director Richard Browne said there was no certainty about whether data is sent back to China but the risk remains.

He said the NCSC had been asked to conduct a risk assessment of TikTok to understand what threat it posed to user data and the security of IT systems belonging to the State. Mr Browne said the NCSC had been unable to “determine with absolute certainty” that TikTok data was not finding its way to the Chinese government.

“The issue here is not what we know to be happening. The issue here is rather what we can’t rule out is happening,” he said. “The advice explicitly points out that there are risks in a pure cybersecurity sense that the user data that is being collected may be made available to other governments.

“It is also a case that the data might be exfiltrated via the application, which we also can’t rule out.” A spokesperson for TikTok, which employs more than 1,000 people in Ireland, said: “We are disappointed by this decision and were not consulted prior to the announcement being made.

“Similar decisions in other countries have been based on fundamental misconceptions and we are always happy to engage with governments and institutions to explain how we protect our TikTok community and their data. Our comprehensive plan includes storing European TikTok user data in our local data centres, including two in Ireland; further tightening data-access controls; and working with a third-party security company to provide independent oversight of our approach.”