More US states ban TikTok from government devices

New Jersey and Ohio said on Monday they were joining other states in banning use of the popular video app TikTok on government-owned and managed devices, reports Reuters. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said in addition to banning the short-video app owned by Chinese technology conglomerate ByteDance from state devices he also was banning software vendors, products, and services from more than a dozen vendors including Huawei, Hikvision, Tencent, ZTE Corporation and Kaspersky Lab.

Murphy’s office said “there have been national security concerns about user data the Chinese government might require ByteDance to provide.”

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, said in his order “these surreptitious data privacy and cybersecurity practices pose national and local security and cybersecurity threats to users of these applications and platforms and the devices storing the applications and platforms.”