The state of New Jersey joined a host of others on Monday who ban the use of TikTok on government-owned and managed devices.
In addition to New Jersey, Ohio announced a similar ban on the software, owned by Chinese technology conglomerate ByteDance.
The short-video app has been linked to “national security concerns” over possible Chinese government use of data gathered by the software.
In his order, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said, “these surreptitious data privacy and cybersecurity practices pose national and local security and cybersecurity threats to users of these applications and platforms and the devices storing the applications and platforms.”
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said his state is also banning software vendors, products and services from more than a dozen other vendors, including Huawei, Hikvision, Tencent Holdings, ZTE Corporation and Kaspersky Lab.
Nearly two dozen states have imposed restrictions on TikTok, most prohibiting the software on government internet networks and/or downloading and using the app on state devices.
