TikTok could soon be banned on ministers' and other senior government officials’ phones.
The social media app is already extremely popular with some politicians as they attempt to connect with the younger generations that are the primary users of the app. For instance, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has 4,530 followers and Tánaiste Micheál Martin has 9,154 followers.
However, both Government leaders’ popularity are dwarfed compared to that of their ministerial colleague, Simon Harris, who has 91,700 followers. Government cybersecurity experts will shortly announce new guidelines for ministers’ work phones after conducting a deep dive into the security risks of having Tik Tok and other social media apps on phones.
Read more: TikTok to open second European data centre in Dublin
Government Minister, Ossian Smyth, said that “more detailed guidance” is being worked on and that this will be issued to all ministers and government officials “in the coming weeks.” Mr Smyth also revealed he does not have the popular app TikTok on any of his phones.
The news comes after a string of countries decided to crack down on the Chinese social media app, which has a company owned by the Chinese government as the main shareholder. The United States, Britain, New Zealand, Denmark and Belgium have all banned politicians and government officials from having TikTok on their devices.
The EU has also told staff of many of its institutions, such as the Commission, that they should delete TikTok off their official phones.
Mr Smith told reporters outside Government Buildings on Wednesday: “On the questions about TikTok, the National Cybersecurity Centre has recently issued guidance on the use of handheld devices across the public sector, how to minimise risk on that.
“And more detailed guidance is going to be issued in the coming weeks. That guidance doesn’t name the companies, it describes the risk, how to measure the type of risk from the different types of apps and what type of precautions to take in which circumstances.
“It doesn’t particularly name any apps or any companies.” He added: “We are making our decisions based on evidence and on an assessment of risk.
“We look and see what type of behaviour is risky and then classify and say this is the type of app that should be restricted in certain circumstances. So we’re issuing guidance which is based on facts rather than picking out a particular vendor or country.
“We took the same approach in the Communications Regulations Bill when we were dealing with relevant vendors. If you’re talking about risky apps, there’s more than one risky app out there.
“The fact is that every government restricts how its mobile phones are used, the ones that are issued to its staff. In many government departments, it is not a majority of staff that have company mobile phones and so each government department decide which apps are allowed and which apps are not allowed.
“And some of them have a very restrictive approach to that. What the National Cybersecurity Centre is doing is issuing broad guidance, which the Government will then have to approve, over how mobile apps, devices should be managed to issue a more consistent or unified approach to that.”
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