London city hall staffers are being barred from downloading a popular social media app onto their city-issued smartphones.
Following in the footsteps of the federal government, the City of London has made the decision to ban TikTok on municipally owned cells.
“After the Treasury Board of Canada issued a statement announcing blocking the use of TikTok on government-issued mobile devices, the City mirrored the decision, effective March 2,” said Mat Daley, the city’s director of information technology services.
Daley said access to the app from city owned desktop computers and laptops will continue to be permitted.
“Information technologies services will continue to monitor Canadian Centre for Cyber Security guidance, and may revisit recommended restrictions based on future guidance,” Daley added.
No city departments had official TikTok accounts prior to the ban and to-date there have been no complaints made about the decision to prevent its use.
“Interestingly, information technologies services has received comments of support as it relates to this action,” said Daley.
Ottawa deemed the Chinese-owned video-sharing app as having an “unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security” and banned it from federal government-issued smartphones last week.
Waterloo and Hamilton have also banned the app on city-issued devices.
