Feb. 23 (UPI) — The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, announced Thursday that TikTok would be banned from employee devices.
The commission said in a statement that it decided to “suspend” the use of TikTok on organizational and personal devices to protect against “cybersecurity threats and actions which may be exploited for cyber-attacks against the corporate environment of the commission.”
“The measure is in line with the commission’s strict internal cybersecurity policies for use of mobile devices for work-related communications,” the statement reads.
The news comes amid growing concerns regarding China’s influence over the social media platform’s parent company, ByteDance.
TikTok said it had requested a meeting “to set the record straight.”
“The European Commission’s suspension of TikTok on corporate devices is misguided and based on fundamental misconceptions,” Caroline Greer, head of public policy at TikTok, said on Twitter.
“We are continuing to enhance our approach to data security — establishing three data centers in Europe to store user data locally; further reducing employee access to data; and minimizing data flows outside of Europe.”
Greer’s comments come after the company revealed after a privacy policy update in November that TikTok employees could see data from European users.
“We allow certain employees within our corporate group located in Brazil, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States remote access to TikTok European user data,” Elaine Fox, head of privacy for Europe at TikTok, said in a statement at the time.
The privacy policy applies to users in the “European Economic Areas, United Kingdom and Switzerland,” the company said.
Former President Donald Trump called for TikTok to be banned in 2020. In September, The New York Times reported that negotiations were underway between TikTok and the administration of President Joe Biden to resolve security concerns.
In December, the U.S. Congress voted to block the app as some lawmakers have called for it to be banned nationwide. EU commissioner Thierry Breton said last month that TikTok could face a possible ban in Europe if the company fails to comply with a new Digital Services Act that will begin this summer.