France Bans The Use Of TikTok On Mobile Phones Of Civil Servant Offices

Minister of Civil Service, Stanislas Guerini, announced the ban on TikTok for civil servants in France. (photo: twitter @StanGuerini)

JAKARTA - France will ban the use of video sharing applications belonging to a Chinese company, TikTok, on mobile phones of civil servants. This was announced by the Minister of Civil Service, Stanislas Guerini, on his Twitter account, Friday, March 24.

"To ensure cybersecurity from administration and civil servants, the government has decided to ban recreational applications such as TikTok on public employee professional phones," he said in a statement.

Pour garantir la cybersécurité de nos administrations et de nos agents publics, le @gouvernementFR a décidé d’interdire les applications récréatives comme TikTok, sur les téléphones professionnels des fonctionnaires d’État. @jnbarrot pic.twitter.com/avxtpKZ6uu

— Stanislas Guerini (@StanGuerini) March 24, 2023

Guerini added that over the past few weeks, several European and international partners France had taken action to limit or ban TikTok's downloads and installations by their administration.

He stated that recreational applications do not have a cybersecurity level and adequate data protection to apply to administrative equipment. He added that the ban took effect immediately and government services would monitor compliance.

He said that, remarkably, exceptions can be given for professional reasons, such as administrative institutional communication.

Western governments and institutions have banned TikTok in recent weeks, including British parliaments, Dutch and Belgian administrations, and New Zealand parliaments.

Last month, the two largest EU policy institutions - Commission and Council - banned TikTok from their staff phones for cybersecurity reasons.

Concerns have increased globally about the potential of the Chinese government to access user locations and contact data through ByteDance, China-based parent company TikTok.