Wells Fargo bans TikTok on all company-owned devices
This comes after Amazon backtracked on its own ban on TikTok, claiming an internal email telling employees to delete the app was simply a "mistake."
Wells Fargo directed its employees last week to delete the Chinese video-sharing app TikTok from all company-owned devices due to privacy concerns.
"We have identified a small number of Wells Fargo employees with corporate-owned devices who had installed the TikTok application on their device," a Wells Fargo spokesperson told FOX Business. "Due to concerns about TikTok’s privacy and security controls and practices, and because corporate-owned devices should be used for company business only, we have directed those employees to remove the app from their devices."
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Amazon on Friday sent out an internal email telling employees they must remove TikTok from their work phones and any mobile devices that have access to company email due to the app’s "security risks.” But the e-commerce giant appeared to backtrack just five hours later, saying the email was sent out by “mistake.”
"This morning’s email to some of our employees was sent in error. There is no change to our policies right now with regard to TikTok," an Amazon spokesperson told FOX Business on Friday.
Amazon is the second-largest U.S. private employer after Walmart. The U.S. military already bans TikTok on employee phones and the company is subject to a national security review of its merger history.
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week that he was “certainly considering” a ban on TikTok and that Americans should avoid downloading the app on their phones unless they want their private information to fall into “the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.”
India this month banned dozens of Chinese apps, including TikTok, citing privacy concerns, amid tensions between the countries.
Owned by the Beijing-based ByteDance, TikTok has been trying to distance itself from its Chinese roots. It recently named a new CEO, former Disney executive Kevin Mayer, a move experts said could help it navigate U.S. regulators. The app is also stopping operations in Hong Kong because of a new Chinese national security law that led Facebook, Google and Twitter to also stop providing user data to Hong Kong authorities.
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Pompeo said the U.S. government remains concerned about TikTok and referred to the administration's crackdown on Chinese telecom firms Huawei and ZTE. A U.S. national security agency has been reviewing ByteDance’s purchase of TikTok’s precursor, Musical.ly. Meanwhile, privacy groups say TikTok has been violating children’s privacy, even after the Federal Trade Commission fined the company in 2019 for collecting personal information from children without their parents’ consent.
TikTok has 65 million users in the United States. Like YouTube, TikTok relies on its users for the videos that populate the app and has a reputation for lightened, dance videos that have become popular with young Americans.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.