TikTok is banned on devices issued by the US House of Representatives

According to an internal memo obtained by NBC News, the staff of the US House of Representatives has been told to remove TikTok from their phones. According to reports, Catherine L Szpindor, the chief administrative officer of the House, banned the popular social media app from being downloaded on House-issued devices.

TikTok is considered a high risk to users due to a lack of transparency regarding how its Chinese parent company handles customer data. House staff are not allowed to download the TikTok app on their phones. You will be contacted if you have the TikTok app on your mobile device.

Nineteen states have banned TikTok.

Brooke Oberwetter, a spokeswoman for TikTok, told The Wall Street Journal that the ban would have minimal impact because very few House- managed phones have TikTok installed.

Several attempts have been made to restrict the use of TikTok in the US due to fears that the Chinese government could use the app to spy on Americans. TikTok is already banned on government-owned devices by the local administrations in 19 states due to security concerns, and the omnibus spending bill passed by Congress on December 23rd includes language banning the app on phones issued to employees of agencies in the executive branch.

The Justice Department is in talks with TikTok.

The company promised to "meaningfully address any security concerns that have been raised at both the federal and state level" after Congress passed a spending bill.

The Senate is not affected by this directive since many members of Congress are on TikTok. A number of senators have called for a ban on TikTok in the US.

If TikTok is to convince the US government that it can be trusted, it will have to do a lot. Several ByteDance employees accessed the TikTok data of US journalists despite the company's claims that it has never been used to target journalists.