Amazon.com Inc banned and then banned TikTok on Saturday.
Friday, Amazon.com Inc banned and then banned the TikTok video sharing application from employees’ mobile devices, calling the move an error.
The news drew wide attention on the Chinese-owned social media platform coming the same week. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States is “certainly” considering “banning TikTok, suggesting that it is sharing information with the Chinese government.
It was not immediately clear what led to the initial ban by Amazon. A person familiar with the matter said senior Amazon executives were unaware of the request to remove TikTok from the employees’ devices. The ban was lifted after representatives from TikTok and Amazon discussed the issue, according to an email sent to TikTok employees.
The attention underscores the hotseat that the owner of TikTok, based in China, ByteDance, has found himself in recent days.
TikTok’s Chinese property, one of the fastest growing digital platforms of all time, has come under scrutiny on issues such as user data management. India banned TikTok and other Chinese apps in June.
The company said user data is stored in the United States with a backup copy in Singapore. A person familiar with the subject said that TikTok’s user data is primarily stored in Google Cloud in its Virginia-based data center.
TikTok declined to comment. Google could not be reached immediately for comment.
This did not prevent Pompeo from suspending a possible ban on TikTok in the United States. When asked if the Americans should download it, he replied to Fox News, “Only if you want your private information to be in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.”
On Friday, the Republican National Committee asked its members by email not to download TikTok. On Friday, the National Democratic Committee (DNC) also reiterated its decision to stop downloading the application.
A person familiar with the matter said that the DNC had been advising campaign staff for months not to use TikTok on their personal devices and to use a separate phone and account if they use the platform for it. campaign work due to the amount of data it tracks. A DNC spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In March, two Republican senators introduced a bill to ban federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued phones, citing national security concerns regarding the collection and sharing of data on American users with the Chinese government.
Last year, the US Navy banned TikTok from government-issued mobile devices, saying the application posed a “cybersecurity threat”.
In November, the US government launched a national security review of TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co’s acquisition of the billion-dollar US social media app Musical.ly, reported Reuters last year.
Security issues
To address concerns over its Chinese ownership, ByteDance has taken steps to move its power center away from China, Reuters previously reported. He is also looking to make changes to TikTok’s business structure for the same reasons, a spokesperson for the company said this week.
But concerns persist. Last month, when Apple released a test version of its iOS operating system to developers with new privacy features, developers showed images of the TikTok app triggering notifications that it was copying data from from the users clipboard, where data is temporarily stored during copying and pasting from one application to another.
TikTok said that the notifications were caused by an anti-spam function but that this would end the practice.
Apple has not restricted employee use of TikTok, one said.
Some American semiconductor companies are reluctant to consider banning TikTok because ByteDance is a customer, according to people familiar with the subject.
Some companies providing security services to large companies have added TikTok to their lists of prohibited apps on managed devices.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
