On Feb. 27, the United States government expressed concerns about TikTok, an app made by the Chinese company ByteDance, that could possibly endanger personal user data.

In the past few months, lawmakers in the United States, Europe and Canada have escalated their attempts to restrict access to TikTok, the extremely popular short-video app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, which is exposing security threats.

The White House notified the federal agencies on Feb. 27 that they had 30 days to delete TikTok from government-controlled devices. A number of other countries and governments including Britain and its parliament, Canada, the European Commission, France and New Zealand’s Parliament have recently banned the app from all of their official devices. 

On April 4, Australia became the latest country to announce that it was restricting TikTok from all government devices. This situation risks renewing political tension between Australia and its largest trading partner. 

Lawmakers and regulators in the West have been increasingly expressing their concerns that TikTok and its company, ByteDance, may be putting personal user data into the hands of the Chinese government. 

Since November, over 25 US states have banned TikTok on government-issue devices and many colleges have blocked it from campus Wi-Fi networks. Students often switch to cellular data to use the app.

The app has already been banned for three years in the US on government devices used by the Army, the Marines, the Air Force and the Coast Guard. But these bans don’t expand towards personal devices used by citizens.

“I don’t personally use it but I think it would limit the ability of people to communicate and it seems like a drastic response,” social studies teacher Pankaj Sharma said.

The possible legislation that has been passed down by the federal government to restrict TikTok has worked through government devices but failed through student-owned devices. In the future, hopefully, students will understand the risk of their personal data through personal information.