The US House of Representatives bans TikTok on the official phones of legislators

The United States House of Representatives has directed its staff and legislators to remove TikTok of all government mobile devices due to "security issues" of the popular video-sharing app.

The order to remove the app was issued by Catherine Szpindor, the Chamber's administrative director, whose office warned in August that the app posed a "high risk to users" citing a "number of security issues."

“Chamber staff may NOT download the TikTok app on any Chamber mobile device”, says a memo sent by Szpindor on Tuesday and seen by NBC News. "If you have the TikTok app on your Chamber mobile device, you will be contacted to remove it."

The new ban follows a series of moves by US state governments to remove TikTok, developed by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, from government devices amid fears that the data collected could allow the Chinese government to spy on Americans, or that the app's algorithm could influence and censor what users see on the app.

As of last week, 19 states - including Texas, Georgia, Maryland, South Dakota, South Carolina and Nebraska - had at least partially blocked the app on state-managed devices out of fear that the Chinese government might use it to track Americans and censor content. The US military has also banned its military from using TikTok on state-owned devices, fearing the app could expose personal data to "unwanted actors."

A broader measure aimed at banning the app on all federally managed devices was included in the $1,66 trillion federal spending omnibus bill passed last week, which will take effect once the President Joe Biden signs the legislation.

In response to the spending bill, TikTok said the move was a "political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests." There are also parallel efforts to ban TikTok from consumer devices across the United States.

Earlier this month, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) also proposed a law that would ban TikTok nationwide. Introducing the bipartisan bill, Rubio said the app allows the Chinese government "a unique ability to monitor more than a billion users worldwide, including nearly two-thirds of American teens."

"Unless TikTok and its algorithm can be separated from Beijing, use of the app in the United States will continue to jeopardize the security of our country and pave the way for a Chinese-influenced tech landscape here.", stated in an article published in the The Washington Post.

TikTok has been raising security and privacy issues for several years. ByteDance admitted that its employees had accessed the user data of journalists to find the source of the company's leaked information.