TikTok, popular video social media platform, may be removed from the Google Play and Apple Appstores.
With over 1 billion active users spread across 154 countries, the removal or other ban will be extremely inconvenient for its addicted users.
According to a CNN report, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr urged Google and Apple to remove TikTok from their app stores due to security concerns, but does this mean the app will be banned? Everything you need to know can be found right here.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr wrote to Apple and Google CEOs Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai on June 28 to request that TikTok be removed from their app stores in response to a “alarming new report” from BuzzFeed claiming that the app “collects vast troves of sensitive data about US users,” which was then accessed by officials in Beijing.
“It is clear that TikTok poses an unacceptable national security risk due to its extensive data being combined with Beijing’s apparently unchecked access to that data,” he wrote.
“But it is also clear that TikTok’s pattern of conduct and misrepresentations regarding the unfettered access that people in Beijing have to sensitive U.S. user data puts it out of compliance with policies that both of your companies require every app to adhere to as a condition of remaining available on your app stores.”
“If you do not remove TikTok from your app stores, please provide separate responses to me by July 8, 2022, explaining the basis for your company’s conclusion that the surreptitious access to private and sensitive U.S. user data by persons located in Beijing, combined with TikTok’s pattern of misleading representations and conduct, does not run afoul of any of your app store policies,” he wrote later in the letter.
TikTok is not just another video app.
That’s the sheep’s clothing.It harvests swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing.
I’ve called on @Apple & @Google to remove TikTok from their app stores for its pattern of surreptitious data practices. pic.twitter.com/Le01fBpNjn
— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) June 28, 2022
Carr’s July 8 deadline has prompted some users to speculate that the app may be banned soon, but is this likely?
They did, however, state that they plan to “delete US users’ protected data from our own systems and fully pivot to Oracle cloud servers located in the US.”
TikTok has been threatened with removal several times in the past. The United States attempted to ban the app with an executive order in 2020, but the ban was ultimately blocked by a federal judge.
Is time up for TikTok? FCC Commissioner @BrendanCarrFCC is asking Apple and Google to remove the platform from their app stores, calling it "a sophisticated tool" for harvesting user data to be seen in China. pic.twitter.com/EJ6RiNdr3u
— TechCheck (@CNBCTechCheck) June 29, 2022
TikTok previously admitted that employees in China “can have access to TikTok U.S. user data subject to a series of robust cybersecurity controls and authorization approval protocols overseen by our U.S.-based security team,” according to Reuters.
