Security minister Tom Tugendhat has reportedly told the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to investigate the safety of TikTok following a wave of government bans around the world.

Tugendhat told Sky News that he would not rule out banning the video hosting platform on government phones but said that he won't make any moves until the NCSC completes its investigation.

"What certainly clear is that, for many young people, TikTok is now a news source,” he continued. "And just as is quite right that we know who owns the news sources in the UK... it's important that we know who owns news sources that are feeding into our phones."
The move comes after a number of bans including."

The move comes after several governments announced they would ban the platform in governmental departments over security concerns, while India banned the app completely.

The EU Commission has banned the TikTok app on both corporate and personal devices over cybersecurity concerns.

The Commission said that the measure protects against potential exploitation in cyber attacks, while the security developments of other social media platforms will be kept under review.

Canada has also banned the use of TikTok on government mobile devices. In a statement Mona Fortier, the president of the treasury board, said the chief information officer of Canada had decided that TikTok presents an unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security.

The US senate is pushing ahead with plans to empower president Joe Biden with the ability to ban TikTok.

A group of senators led by Democrat Mark Warner and Republican John Thune unveiled a series of proposals that will give the Biden administration new tools to ban the app, along with other apps which could pose security risks.

Last Friday Denmark’s public-service broadcaster DR has became the latest organisation to raise security concerns over the Chinese social media platform.

In a statement on its website, DR said that it now advises employees not to use the app on their work phones.

Under pressure from the global security concerns with the app, last week TikTok
launched new security measures in response to fears about how user data is shared with China.

TikTok said that the initiative, dubbed Project Clover, will use a separate security firm to monitor data flows and users will be anonymised to make them harder to identify.

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