Canadian companies should consider TikTok ban following government step: experts
Global News
TikTok has long been embroiled in privacy concerns because its parent company ByteDance is based in China, where laws allow the country to demand access to user data.
The federal government’s move to ban TikTok on its phones should make companies think twice about their data policies and consider blocking the app on its own devices, academics say.
Data privacy and technology professors say Ottawa’s ban of the app, along with an investigation into the company launched last week by a group of Canadian privacy commissioners, should be enough to push companies into thinking critically about social media.
TikTok, a video-based social media platform where users share music, dancing, instructional content and commentary, has long been embroiled in privacy concerns because its parent company ByteDance is based in China, where laws allow the country to demand access to user data.
The app’s privacy policy says it collects everything from email addresses and phone numbers to the content uploaded and information on users’ keystroke patterns, battery levels, audio settings and locations.
“Given the Chinese government’s track record of collecting secret information,if I was running an enterprise … I would certainly be advising my employees not to have this installed on their own devices,” said Brett Caraway, a professor of media economics at the University of Toronto.
Companies may need to be especially wary of the app if their employees deal with intellectual property, patents and trade secrets, which could potentially fall into Chinese hands, he warned.
“But it’s not just strictly a Chinese phenomenon,” he said.
“The U.S. government has had similar provisions as well, and there’s plenty of U.S. digital intermediary platforms that have transferred data back to the U.S. government, allegedly for national security reasons.”