Ireland's government staff recommended removing TikTok from work devices

An Irish state advisory body that advises the government on issues related to cyber security has recommended that employees of state-owned departments and state agencies refrain from using the Chinese-owned video app TikTok on their official devices.

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TikTok has been blocked in a number of Western countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, and other member states of the European Union, due to security concerns. Also, last month, the two biggest policymaking institutions in the EU banned the use of the app.

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There are concerns that the Chinese government may use TikTok's app to harvest data from users or to advance its own interests, which is why governments and regulators are scrutinizing the app, owned by Chinese firm ByteDance.

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According to the head of Ireland's National Cyber Security Centre, TikTok is on the "very high end, if not the highest end, in terms of the amount of user data that it collects" and this creates a threat because of the nature of Chinese laws associated with intelligence gathering.

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"It is not the fact that we know what is happening. It is more of the fact that we cannot rule out that what we can't ignore is going on," NCSC director Richard Browne told RTE, a national broadcaster.

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"When this kind of risk exists in these kinds of contexts, then it puts us in a situation where the logical argument is that we should take a sensible risk-based approach to protect government data in this manner and ensure that the data cannot be compromised in such a way."

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It has been stated that the NCSC does not see any reason why politicians should not be able to use the app on their private devices and that it can be used on official devices when there is a business need, such as by a press office.

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A number of TikTok's operations in the European Union are run out of Dublin, including data privacy and data protection operations. The company announced last month that it would open a second data center in Ireland and reduce the amount of data that is transferred outside of the European Union.