Irish government staff advised to remove TikTok from work devices

On Friday, the Irish government’s cyber security advisory council advised government employees not to use TikTok on official devices.

British, American, and EU governments have banned TikTok due to security concerns. The EU’s two largest policymaking organs banned the app last month.

Governments and regulators are concerned that China’s government could use TikTok, controlled by ByteDance, to gather users’ data or further its objectives.

Given Chinese intelligence-gathering rules, TikTok’s “very high end, if not the highest end in terms of the amount of user data it collects” poses a risk, according to Ireland’s National Cyber Security Centre head.

“This is not the issue. “What we can’t rule out is happening,” NCSC director Richard Browne told RTE.

“Once the risk exists in this kind of context, then it puts us in a situation where the logical argument is that we take a sensible risk-based approach and ensure that government data can’t be compromised this way.”

The NCSC said MPs could use the software on their private devices and on official devices if there was a commercial need, such as a press office.

Dublin hosts TikTok’s European data privacy and protection operations. Last month, it announced it would open a second data center in Ireland and limit data transfers beyond the EU.