Belgium is banning TikTok from government phones over concerns about cybersecurity, privacy and disinformation, the country’s prime minister said on Friday, mirroring recent actions by other authorities in Europe and the United States
The Chinese-owned video-sharing app will be temporarily banned from devices owned or paid for by the Belgian federal government for at least six months, according to a post on Alexander de Croo’s website.
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TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Owned by China’s ByteDance, the company has long claimed that it does not share data with the Chinese government and that its data is not stored in China.
TikTok unveiled new measures this week to ease user data protection concerns in Europe.
Belgium has instituted a nationwide ban on TikTok for government-issued devices (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
But the three main institutions of the European Union and the Danish Ministry of Defense have already ordered employees to remove the app from devices used for official activities. Similar bans have been imposed in Canada and the United States
The TikTok brawl is part of a larger global rivalry between China and the United States and its Western allies over technological and economic supremacy.
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De Croo said Belgium’s ban was based on warnings from the state security service and its cybersecurity center that the app could harvest user data and modify algorithms to manipulate its news feed and its content.
They also warned that TikTok could be coerced into spying on behalf of Beijing, he said, without being more specific.
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“We are in a new geopolitical context where influence and surveillance between states has shifted to the digital world,” de Croo said in an online statement. “We mustn’t be naive: TikTok is a Chinese company that today is forced to cooperate with the intelligence services. This is the reality. Banning its use on federal services devices is common sense.”
