Interior Ministry asks staff to remove TikTok from devices

Several politicians do not deem the Chinese app to be a security threat.

The Slovak Interior Ministry has asked its employees to uninstall TikTok from their devices.The Slovak Interior Ministry has asked its employees to uninstall TikTok from their devices. (Source: TASR/AP/Sean Kilpatrick)

The Slovak Interior Ministry has sent out an email to its employees in which the department recommends uninstalling TikTok, a Chinese video-sharing app, from their devices.

The tech website Živé.sk was the first to break the news on March 13.

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The ministry’s warning comes after several countries, including the USA and the Czech Republic, have voiced their concerns. Politicians from these countries argue that the communist Chinese government could use the data collected by the tech giant to spy on people and even influence politics in their countries. The USA is considering banning the app completely.

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“TikTok collects a large amount of information that ends up on third-party servers,” the Slovak Interior Ministry has pointed out. The department believes that how the data are collected and their amount could be used to target individuals.

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