Austin, TX
UT-Austin blocks access to TikTok on campus Wi-Fi networks
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The College of Texas at Austin has blocked entry to the video-sharing app TikTok on its Wi-Fi and wired networks in response to Gov. Greg Abbott’s latest directive requiring all state businesses to take away the app from government-issued gadgets, in response to an electronic mail despatched to college students Tuesday.
“The college is taking these vital steps to get rid of dangers to data contained within the college’s community and to our vital infrastructure,” UT-Austin know-how adviser Jeff Neyland wrote within the electronic mail. “As outlined within the governor’s directive, TikTok harvests huge quantities of knowledge from its customers’ gadgets — together with when, the place and the way they conduct web exercise — and presents this trove of doubtless delicate data to the Chinese language authorities.”
TikTok is owned by the Chinese language firm ByteDance Ltd. Final month, FBI Director Chris Wray raised nationwide safety issues in regards to the Chinese language authorities’s potential to doubtlessly acquire information on customers and use the app’s algorithms to “manipulate content material” and “use it for affect operations.”
Abbott’s Dec. 7 directive said that each one state businesses should ban workers from downloading or utilizing the app on government-issued gadgets, together with cellphones, laptops and desktops, with exceptions for legislation enforcement businesses. He additionally directed the Texas Division of Public Security and the Texas Division of Info Assets to create a plan to information state businesses on find out how to deal with the usage of TikTok on private gadgets, together with people who have entry to a state worker’s electronic mail account or hook up with a state company community. That plan was to be distributed to state businesses by Jan. 15.
Every state company is predicted to create its personal coverage relating to the usage of TikTok on private gadgets by Feb. 15.
Greater than half of states within the U.S. have banned the usage of the social media app on authorities gadgets in some capability in latest months, in response to a CNN evaluation. Throughout the nation, a rising variety of universities have banned the app on gadgets linked to campus networks, together with Auburn College in Alabama, the College of Oklahoma and the colleges throughout the College System of Georgia.
The ban may have broad impacts significantly at universities serving college-age college students, a key demographic that makes use of the app. College admissions departments have used it to attach with potential college students, and plenty of athletics departments have used TikTok to advertise sporting occasions and groups. It’s additionally unclear how the ban will impression school who analysis the app or professors who train in areas corresponding to communications or public relations, wherein TikTok is a closely used medium.
In a press release, a consultant from TikTok stated they’re disillusioned by the information.
“We’re disillusioned that so many states are leaping on the political bandwagon to enact insurance policies that can do nothing to advance cybersecurity of their states and are primarily based on unfounded falsehoods about TikTok,” spokesperson Jamal Brown wrote. “We’re particularly sorry to see the unintended penalties of those rushed insurance policies starting to impression universities’ potential to share data, recruit college students, and construct communities round athletic groups, pupil teams, campus publications, and extra.”
Representatives for different giant public universities within the state — together with Texas A&M College, Texas Tech College and the College of Houston — didn’t instantly reply to questions on whether or not college leaders plan to take comparable steps at their campuses.
Disclosure: Texas A&M College, Texas Tech College, College of Texas at Austin and College of Houston have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan information group that’s funded partially by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Monetary supporters play no position within the Tribune’s journalism. Discover a full checklist of them right here.