US federal agencies are being asked to guarantee that their devices will not have the TikTok video app installed and will not allow the installation or use of the video app TikTok within a maximum period of 30 days, according to a circular released Monday by the Department of Management and Budget (Office of Management and Budget, OMB) of the White House.

The application TikTok, by the Chinese company ByteDance, has been targeted by US lawmakers, who say it poses a threat to US national security. Its use on public officials’ devices was banned by a law passed in late December.

The OMB circular was distributed to clarify the implementation of the law, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden in early January.

The “memorandum to the heads” of federal agencies, signed by Salanda Young, the head of the OMB, asks all of them to “uninstall and ban the installation” of the app on devices they own or manage, and to “ban internet traffic » from their devices to this app.

The wildly popular short video platform has come under fire in the West, where some governments say they are concerned Beijing could gain access to user data around the world.

The ban on its use on the devices of the US federal government comes a few days after a similar decision was taken by the European Commission, banning the use of TikTok to all its staff without exception, for the “protection” of the institution.

The government of Canada, for its part, announced yesterday on Monday that it will ban the use of the TikTok platform on all mobile devices given to its personnel from Tuesday, citing an “unacceptable level of risk” to security and privacy.

TikTok was also among the Chinese online apps banned in India in 2020.

With over a billion active users globally, TikTok ranks sixth among the most used social networking sites, according to the latest We Are Social report on the evolution of digital services, released in January.

The TikTok service acknowledged in November that some of its employees in China may have had access to European user data, and in December that its employees had used data to track down journalists. But the company that manages the platform categorically denies that there is any access and any control by the Chinese government on this data.