Belgium bans TikTok on mobile phones for official use

BRUSSELS (AP) — Belgium is banning TikTok from government phones over concerns about cybersecurity, privacy and misinformation, the country’s prime minister said on Friday, as the Belgian government has blocked recent moves by d other authorities in Europe and the United States.

The Chinese-owned video-sharing app will be temporarily banned for at least six months on devices owned or paid for by the Belgian federal government, according to a post on Prime Minister Alexander de Croo’s website.

At this time, TikTok has not responded to a request for statements for its views. The company, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has long insisted that it does not share data with the Chinese government and that such information is not stored in China.

TikTok introduced new measures this week to allay fears about user data protection in Europe.

However, the three main institutions of the European Union and the Danish Ministry of Defense have ordered their employees in advance to remove the app from devices used for official business. Similar bans have been imposed in Canada and the United States.

The dispute over TikTok is part of a larger global rivalry between China and the United States and its Western allies for technological and economic supremacy.

De Croo said the Belgian ban was based on warnings from the state security service and its cybersecurity center, which said the app could collect user data and modify algorithms to manipulate information and the contents.

They also warned that TikTok could be coerced into spying on Beijing, the prime minister said, without giving further details.

“We live in a new geopolitical context in which influence and surveillance between states have shifted to the digital world,” De Croo detailed in an online statement.