Army bans TikTok on government-issued phones

The U.S. Army has banned military personnel from using the popular video app TikTok on governmentissued phones, following guidance from the Pentagon and highlighting growing tensions over the app’s Beijing-based parent firm.

An Army spokeswoman told Military.com in an interview released this week that the app was “considered a cyber threat” and not allowed on government-issued devices. An Army spokeswoman told The Washington Post that the service branch was adhering to directions from the Defense Department, which flagged the app for “potential security risks.”

The measure follows a similar ban from the U.S. Navy and a “cyber awareness” message earlier in December from the Defense Department, which urged the Pentagon’s roughly 23,000 employees to uninstall the app because it could potentially expose data to “unwanted actors.”

A Pentagon spokesman said the threat is related to potential loss of personally identifiable information but would not provide further detail. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Army’s ban and the rare notice from the Pentagon, which does not generally issue policy measures on individual social media services, reflects deeprooted doubts throughout Washington about TikTok and its Chinese parent, ByteDance. Some of their suspicions stem from criticisms raised by TikTok’s former employees, who told The Washington Post earlier this year that the company in the past restricted videos in alignment with Chinese rules on acceptable speech.

In response, TikTok has sought to rebut lingering privacy, security and censorship concerns. It says it stores U.S. users’ data in Virginia with a backup in Singapore, for example, and doesn’t apply Beijing’s strict content guidelines in the United States.

The Defense Department has recommended that service members “be wary” of the apps they download and to research the developers’ ownership for “any suspicious foreign connections.”