British Parliament blocks TikTok over security concerns

LONDON - Britain’s Parliament will block TikTok on all devices on its network.

The country last week

banned the Chinese-owned video app on government phones.

In doing so, Britain becomes the latest Western institution to bar the Chinese-owned video app over security concerns.

“Following the government’s decision to ban TikTok from government devices, the commissions of both the House of Commons and Lords have decided that TikTok will be blocked from all parliamentary devices and the wider parliamentary network,” the spokesman said.

“Cyber security is a top priority for Parliament.”

The United States, Canada, Belgium and the European Commission have

already banned the app from official devices.

TikTok has come under increasing scrutiny due to fears that user data from the app owned by Beijing-based company ByteDance could end up in the hands of the Chinese government, undermining Western security interests.

The British Parliament’s ban was announced as

TikTok’s chief executive Chew Shou Zi faced questions

from US lawmakers, who are convinced the app should be barred for being a potential national security threat to the US. REUTERS