Unraveling the TikTok Ban and Privacy Concerns

TikTok Getting Banned in the USA: Key Reasons

The United States of America has been deciding on TikTok getting banned. This info has been sharing in different media for several months. The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has confirmed this fact. According to Pompeo, the decision to ban TikTok is under consideration.” Pompeo said that he had advised utilizing this app ” only to those people who want their personalized data to getinto the hands of the Chinese Communist Party .” If the United States decides to block TikTok, it will not be the first in the list. It is worth stressing that TikTok has already been banned in India. Moreover, the possibility of blocking TikTok has actively been discussed by Australia. Such an idea becomes more and more widespread in the world.

What is TikTok? Brief Info

TikTok is one of the services used to create and watch short videos, It was launched in China in the summer of 2018. It has been owned by the company ByteDance based in Beijing. Since its launch, the app has become one of the most downloaded worldwide. The application has reached over 1 billion downloads within 155 states. Due to its popularity, there are reasons that make many states to block or ban it.

Why TikTok getting banned?: Key Reasons

The network has for long time been suspected of illegally collecting personal data of its users. For example, in February 2018, TikTok was suspected the illegal collection of the data of young people under 12 without the consent by their parents in the USA. Consequently, the company was then fined $ 5.7 million. It was the beginning of the banning process. In December 2019, the military authorities in the USA imposed the ban on applying TikTok for all its employees. The application was suspected of stealing the data of the users. In January 2020, the utilization of TikTok on different office devices was banned for employees working at the US State Department of Homeland Security. In such a way, the process to ban TikTok petition started in the USA.

Then TikTok has already been blocked by the Indian Government

In June 2020, the app was included in the list of the famous Chinese applications that the authorities in India regarded as “violating the territorial sovereignty and integrity of the state.” Thus, it was banned. In the nearest future, it is possible to assume that Australia will ban TikTok. For the same reasons – the app has been accused of espionage on the users’ personal data. Therefore, TikTok ban Australia is a straightforward-coming process. The TikTok banned in Australia is a vivid example strict actions.

The European Union (EU) has been inspecting the service very thoroughly In June, the Committee on Data Protection initiated an investigation on TikTok due to the illegal collection of personal data of the users. Thus, a working group was to “coordinate all the actions and develop a clearer vision in terms of TikTok usage in the EU”. It is imperative to note that the petition to ban TikTok has been suggested in the EU as well.

The Spying Specifics Applied by TikTok

It is essential to mention that so far no proofs of illegal actions have been revealed. Developers and average users indicate that the new version of the application, released in June, may allow seeing how apps utilize different personal data. According to some hackers, the app collects phone numbers, passwords, birth-dates, names, info about other apps, info about the activity in the Internet, Wi-Fi access points, IP addresses, etc. The app captures the location each 30 seconds in addition.

In accordance with numerous executive orders, TikTok must be banned in the USA due to various national security concerns. Specific concerns are primarily around data privacy and data security. It is evident that TikTok has been collecting extensive data on its users, and the US authorities consider that the government of China will be capable of accessing this data and leverage any of it for blackmail, or espionage. Furthermore, there are a few other motifs that have significantly contributed to US actions against TikTok. The motif is an evident escalation in the current technology tensions between China and the USA, grounded on earlier US actions against hardware companies, including ZTE and Huawei. Moreover, it reflects the desire of some officials for reciprocity in the China-US relationship, considering the fact that many US companies are not allowed to freely operate in China. Consequently, the USA does all possible to block TikTok.

Therefore, is TikTok getting banned? The situation is very obscure. In September, the federal judge managed to block the Trump administration’s order aimed at removing TikTok from the application stores. After the ruling by the federal judge, TikTok asked to “maintain the current dialogue with the US authorities so as to turn the offer, which the President had given his approval into the agreement.” Trump took the decision to approve the deal with Walmart and Oracle, with each getting minority stakes in the company; however, it is still unclear if the above-mentioned deal would take place in practice. TikTok has about 100 million users in the USA, in accordance with the newest data collected and released.

December 11 – It should be noted that 2 federal judges blocked the order by the Commerce Department to ban all the transactions with the parent company of TikTok – ByteDance. One more hearing is to take place on December 14 so that the US authorities could appeal the injunction on the order by the Commerce Department. If a judge denies the above appeal, the suggested TikTok ban will be over effectively.