Australia will
announce a ban on TikTok on government phones this week, after other countries
banned the Chinese-owned video app over security concerns, an Australian
newspaper reported on Monday evening.
Prime Minister
Anthony Albanese has agreed to a government ban on the use of TikTok following
a Home Office investigation, The Australian newspaper reported.
The state of
Victoria will also ban short-form video applications from government phones,
the Age newspaper reported, citing a state government official as saying
Victoria would follow federal guidelines.
The United
States, Great Britain, New Zealand, Canada, Belgium and the European Commission
have banned the use of official devices for security reasons.
TikTok is under
scrutiny amid concerns that user data from the Beijing-based ByteDance app
could end up in the hands of the Chinese government, harming Western interests.
The Age
newspaper quoted Tiktok Australia CEO Lee Hunter as saying the company was
disappointed to learn of the ban on social media "even though we have
repeatedly offered to work with the government together about this
policy".
"We stress that there is no
evidence to suggest that TikTok is in any way a security risk to Australians
and should not be treated differently to other social media platforms," he
was quoted as saying.