Security News > 2022 > November > TikTok NSFW if you work for the South Dakota government

The governor of South Dakota issued an executive order on Tuesday banning the use of Chinese social media platform TikTok for state government agencies, employees and contractors on state devices.

In a press release the state government said the order was in response to the growing national security threat posed by TikTok's data-gathering operations on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.

"The Chinese Communist Party uses information that it gathers on TikTok to manipulate the American people, and they gather data off the devices that access the platform."

South Dakota is not the first government entity to ban TikTok from government-issued devices.

TikTok said earlier this year it is making efforts to improve its data handling and that its protection of US user data was being reviewed by CFIUS. The company has maintained that 100 percent of US user data is routed to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, with backups in a Singapore datacenter with further improvements in progress.

The legitimacy of that claim was brought into question when a letter from the company's CEO to US Republican senators revealed some China-based employees did have access to US TikTok data, "Subject to a series of robust cybersecurity controls and authorization approval protocols overseen by [the] US-based security team."

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/11/30/tiktok_nsfw_if_you_work/