Financial services giant Wells Fargo has become the latest high-profile company to ban TikTok from company-owned mobile devices.
The San Francisco-based bank has asked employees to remove the Chinese video-sharing app if it is being used on company phones, according to a report by The Information.
Last week, e-commerce giant Amazon asked employees to remove TikTok on mobile devices used to access company email accounts. However, despite giving employees until Friday to complete this task, Amazon responded to media inquiries that the emails were in fact sent in error.
However, Wells Fargo has sent a note to all employees and appears to be serious about its decision.
A Wells Fargo spokesperson told The Information that the bank's TikTok ban was the result of security and privacy concerns.
"We have identified a small number of Wells Fargo employees with company-owned devices who had the TikTok application installed on their devices," the spokesperson said.
"Due to concerns about TikTok's privacy and security controls and practices, and because company-owned devices should only be used for company business, we have instructed those employees to remove the app from their devices."
In the past few weeks, TikTok and its Chinese parent company Bytedance have faced a lot of negative publicity over app privacy.
Officials in several countries are concerned that the app, which has more than 800 million users worldwide, could be used as a spying tool by Chinese intelligence agencies.
The app has already been banned in India as part of a broader wave of anti-China sentiment, and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently suggested that Washington might make a similar move.
Despite this, TikTok is adamant that it is not putting its users at risk.
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