Cabinet calls on officials to remove TikTok from their phones

The urgent call comes from Secretary of State for Digital Affairs Alexandra van Haflen, who does not want spying apps on civil servants’ phones. According to AIVD, China is engaged in an ‘offensive cyber project’ against the Netherlands.

Belgium and the European Union have banned their officials from using TikTok, and the U.S. already did so last year. The U.S. is also developing legislation to ban the use of TikTok. Not just for government employees, but for everyone. That rings true in the Netherlands, too. This is supported by the Christian Union.

Late last year, the Chinese company that owns TikTok changed its privacy terms. As a result, Europeans’ privacy-sensitive data could end up in China’s hands. This user data may be used by the Chinese government for espionage. This happened before the journalists of the American business magazine Forbes. It worked in an article on a social media site. Little did they know that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was spying on journalists.

Additionally, there are concerns that the Chinese government could influence public opinion through TikTok. So a parliamentary majority argued in February that TikTok should be banned in the Netherlands. Van Haflen says the national government’s policy will be changed ‘as soon as possible’ so it is technically impossible for civil servants to install spy-sensitive apps. It’s not just applications from China, but also from, for example, Iran and Russia.

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