Texas Gov. Greg Abbott banned using TikTok through state companies on Wednesday, becoming a member of 4 different states that acted towards the platform over cyber safety issues.
The Lone Star State governor despatched letters to a number of state leaders, no longer simply to focus on Texas’ duty to offer protection to the security and safety of Texans, but in addition the rustic’s duty to determine overseas insurance policies of mentioned protections.
“TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users’ devices—including when, where, and how they conduct Internet activity—and offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government,” reads one letter from Abbott to state leaders. “While TikTok has claimed that it stores U.S. data within the U.S., the company admitted in a letter to Congress that China-based employees can have access to U.S. data.”
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According to a commentary from Abbott’s place of work, over 85 million customers within the U.S. use TikTok, which is owned through a Chinese corporate “that employees Chinese Communist Party members and has a subsidiary partially owned by the Chinese Communist Party.”
Abbott ordered state company leaders to prohibit officials and staff from downloading or the usage of TikTok on any tool issued through the state, whether or not pc, pill, laptop, mobile phone or different tool in a position to connecting to the web.
He could also be requiring the Texas Department of Public Safety and Texas Department of Information Resources to supply a plan that addresses TikTok vulnerabilities on non-public units through Jan. 15, 2023.
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Up till Wednesday, South Dakota, South Carolina, and Maryland had taken motion to prohibit use of the platform through state companies. Texas and Indiana become the fourth and 5th states to lift issues over the video-fueled social media platform influenced through Russia and China, with the latter state launching an investigation into TikTok for exposing minors to mature content material and deceiving customers about China’s get entry to to person knowledge.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, on Wednesday, introduced two court cases towards TikTok.
One lawsuit accuses TikTok of luring kids onto the platform thru “infrequent/mild” sexual content material, profanity or drug references, the lawyer common mentioned, when the app is stuffed with excessive examples of that form of subject matter.
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The 2d lawsuit claims “highly sensitive” knowledge and private details about Indiana customers isn’t safe from the Chinese govt and Communist celebration.
“The TikTok app is a malicious and menacing threat unleashed on unsuspecting Indiana consumers by a Chinese company that knows full well the harms it inflicts on users,” Rokita mentioned in a commentary. “With this pair of lawsuits, we hope to force TikTok to stop its false, deceptive and misleading practices, which violate Indiana law.”