Interior Ministry employees should consider deleting the Chinese social media app from their phones as it is considered a security threat, the ministry wrote in a statement on Tuesday.
Recently, the European Commission and the European Parliament requested staff to delete TikTok from corporate devices and personal devices using corporate apps. Concerns about the platform have also been raised by member states, such as the Czech Republic and Denmark.
“As a precautionary measure, the Ministry of the Interior has warned its employees of a serious cyber threat associated with the installation and use of the TikTok application on service devices and devices accessing the information and communication systems of the Ministry of the Interior,” the statement reads.
Based on actions taken at the EU and member-state levels, the Slovak Interior Ministry decided to conduct an internal analysis of the potential security threats.
“TikTok collects a lot of information that ends up on third-party servers. The amount of data and the way it is collected can be used to target cyber-attacks on specific individuals – and thus increase the risk of success of, for example, spear phishing,” said the Ministry.
The Ministry also questions the method by which Tiktok collects and processes data, referring to China’s legal and political environment. While the Ministry’s statement is only a recommendation and not an order, the government’s office decided to ban work phones.
“The government office manages its mobile devices through MDM (Mobile Device Management), where the user can install only selected and approved applications. TikTok is not among the allowed applications,” a prime minister spokesman has said.
Source: euractiv.com
