The French government has approved a law that bans the installation and use of entertainment apps, including TikTok, Instagram and Twitter, on the smartphones and tablets it provides to its employees. The law was approved by the Ministry of Transformation and Public Functions, and in a statement, the minister Stanislas Guerini justified it by stating that no unemployment app is strong enough to develop devices owned by the government.
The Minister warned that the prohibited tools therefore represent a risk to the information stored by government institutions, and also by their employees. Of course, Guerini ensured that there were some exceptions to the use and installation of these applications, but only for apps that are necessary for official communications, as is possible with Twitter. In these cases, the official who must use it for professional purposes will have to apply for a license.
For now it is not known when the law will come into force, since the authors have not provided for that date. The specific name of the banned apps has not been given, although Guerini has indicated that the named apps are included in the ban, as well as Netflix or game apps, such as Candy Crush. The French Cybersecurity Agency is in charge of monitoring and supervising compliance with the ban
The country is not the first to review the use of applications in the mobile devices of its governments, and also of some special institutions. But the first thing is to stop the use of all leisure. In most other cases, the ban on TikTok is limited.
The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union, among others, have already banned TikTok from government smartphones, amid concerns from authorities that the Chinese government could hand over data to the network’s owner, ByteDance. to your users in other countries. Additionally, TikTok is only looking at a full ban in the US if ByteDance doesn’t sell it.
