Amazon reportedly told employees Friday that they must delete the TikTok from phones they use to access their work email accounts, citing “security risks.”
“Due to security risks, the TikTok app is no longer permitted on mobile devices that access Amazon email,” employees were told, according to a copy of the email tweeted by New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz.
Here's the email Amazon sent to employees this morning banning TikTok from employee phones.
— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) July 10, 2020
"If you have TikTok on your device, you must remove it by 10-Jul to retain mobile access to Amazon email." pic.twitter.com/fIgmqyMhmO
Employees were told they must delete TikTok from their work devices by Friday in order to keep accessing their Amazon emails.
TikTok has garnered scrutiny for its data collection practices. Much of that scrutiny stems from the fact that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company; however, experts told Business Insider that its data collection practices largely mirror those of popular US apps like Facebook.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration said it’s considering banning TikTok in the US due to its Chinese ownership and data collection — but it hasn’t clarified what such a ban would look like.
New details of TikTok’s data collection practices came to light in recent weeks thanks to a new feature in Apple’s iOS 14 that caught the app snooping on users’ clipboard data. TikTok has since said it disabled the feature.