US steps up battle against TikTok, bans congressmen from downloading it

[samiaseo75]

TikTok , one of the most popular social networks in the world in recent years, is in the crosshairs of the US government , which has just banned its congressmen from downloading the application on official mobile phones for security reasons.

Catherine Szpindor, the chief administrative officer for the US Congress, sent an internal message last week that read: “House staff are not authorized to download this app on work phones. If you already have it downloaded, you will be contacted to remove it.”

On December 14, the United States Senate voted by india phone number data consensus to ban the TikTok app from official devices of federal government employees, although the law had to be approved by the House of Representatives to become law.

The stark warning comes after several lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, have suggested that data collected by the popular short-video app could end up in the hands of the Chinese government.

With this sweeping move, which comes after both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have suggested that the app collects information without users' consent, Congress is adding to existing bans in at least 19 states where their governments have blocked the TikTok app on public workers' devices.

US government alleges TikTok could endanger national security
The United States is the country with the most TikTok accounts in the world: 136.5 million people use it. However, the clash between the application, of Chinese origin and owned by the company ByteDance , is not new. The American authorities believe that its use could affect national security since they claim that the application tracks the locations of mobile phones and even browsing data.