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AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Amid rising national security concerns, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban of TikTok on state-issued gadgets halted exercise on pages for state businesses and universities.
“The threat of the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate the United States continues to grow on multiple fronts,” Gov. Abbott mentioned in a letter despatched to state businesses earlier this month. “TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users’ devices—including when, where, and how they conduct internet activity—and offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government.”
The order bans state workers from having TikTok on state-issued gadgets, becoming a member of comparable bans in additional than a dozen states.
“There are legitimate concerns that TikTok might be a dangerous place, especially for state employees, for people who might have sensitive information on their devices,” tech and tradition journalist Omar Gallaga mentioned, drawing a distinction from different social media giants that additionally acquire their customers’ private information. “The main concern is that it’s a Chinese company… it’s a foreign nation where this company is based versus Facebook or Google or other companies that have U.S. headquarters.”
Texas’ ban additionally extends to public universities. Days after Abbott’s order, the University of Texas at Austin notified workers they need to “immediately remove TikTok from all state-issued devices.”
“It is the policy of The University of Texas at Austin to manage risks to and safeguard the university’s resources from threats posed by malware and other cyber threats,” the college’s Chief Compliance Officer Jeff Graves mentioned. “Malware includes software that intercepts information and delivers it to a third party without authorization.”
Two of UT’s official TikTok accounts — @hookem and @texaslonghorns — haven’t posted since earlier than Gov. Abbott’s directive.
Other universities have taken additional efforts to take away TikTok from public universities. The University of Oklahoma and Auburn University banned college students from accessing the app on college wi-fi. It is unclear whether or not Texas universities might comply with go well with, however Gallaga expects Gov. Abbott to take additional motion.
“The university could say, ‘We don’t mind if you have TikTok, but you’re not going to use it on university property,’ he said. “That certainly is on the table.”
Concerns over TikTok’s information security started in earnest at the federal degree when former President Donald Trump thought of a federal ban. That got here to fruition this month, when Congress banned the app on all federal gadgets as half of the year-end omnibus spending invoice.
TikTok maintains that Americans’ information just isn’t saved in China, however Gov. Abbott took situation with that protection.
While TikTok has claimed that it shops U.S. information throughout the U.S., the corporate admitted in a letter to Congress that China-based workers can have entry to that U.S. information,” he wrote within the letter to state businesses. “It has also been reported that ByteDance planned to use TikTok location information to surveil individual American citizens.”
TikTok stays the dominant social media particularly amongst youthful customers, nonetheless, with greater than a billion customers worldwide and places of work in Austin.
“Facebook, Google, Apple, have all done shady things with our data,” Gallaga mentioned. “We willingly do that with U.S. companies. The only difference here is there is concern there are some national security issues.”
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