Moncton 
New Brunswick is the latest provincial government to ban the social media application Tik Tok from devices issued by them.
The ban is effective immediately, and the government says in addition to being wiped from all government-issued devices, TikTok will also be blocked from being downloaded onto devices.
“The protection of personal information is of the utmost importance,” said Liz Byrne-Zwicker, chief information officer for the provincial government. “This decision is a precautionary measure to ensure the private information government employees have access to on a daily basis is not threatened.”
Following the ban by Ottawa, the governments of Quebec, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan have banned the Tik Tok from provincially issued devices.
New Brunswick says the decision to remove TikTok from government-issued devices and block its download aligns with the stance taken by other provinces and the recent declaration by the federal government’s chief information officer that the social media app poses an unacceptable risk to privacy and security.
According to Byrne-Zwicker, experts have raised concerns about TikTok’s data collection methods, which grant broad access to a mobile device’s content. There are also worries about the legal framework governing the information collected. However, she clarified that there is no current indication of any private information being compromised through mobile devices issued by the provincial government.
