THE France I will forbid the use of Chinese-owned video platform TikTok on the professional phones of civil servants, as the Minister of the Public Sector of the country, Stanislas Gerini, wrote on his Twitter account.

“In order to guarantee the cyber security of our services and public servants, the government has decided to ban entertainment applications, such as TikTok, on the work phones of public servants,” he said in a statement.

The minister added that for several weeks, several European and international partners of France adopted measures to limit or prohibit the uploading and installation of the TikTok application by their administrators.

Guerini said the entertainment apps do not have sufficient levels of cyber security and data protection to be used on public sector equipment and clarified that the ban is effective immediately and that government agencies will monitor compliance.

As he added, there will be exceptions for professional reasons, such as communication within an institution or service.

A few days ago the Dutch interior ministry announced that Dutch public servants would not be allowed to use TikTok on their work phones, while this month Belgium banned TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, from phones and computers. of federal government employees.

At the same time, the Italian competition authority announced the launch of an investigation against TikTok, on suspicion of not applying its own control rules for “dangerous content that encourages suicide, self-harm and eating disorders”.

The investigation by the Italian competition authority targets the Irish company TikTok Technology Limited, which is responsible for relations with the Europeans

TikTok is currently targeted by many countries for national security reasons. Following the lead of many Western powers – the US, Canada and the European Union – Britain has in turn banned the app from government devices.