Social-Media
Amazon says it won't ban employee phones from Using TikTok
Amazon says that despite sending an email calling for workers to delete the app earlier on Friday, it won't ask employees to remove popular social video-sharing app TikTok from their mobile devices.
Amazon asked employees to remove TikTok from their mobile devices, citing security risks, as first reported by The New York Times on Friday. An Amazon spokeswoman on Friday told The Verge the email was "sent in error."
"The email sent to some of our employees this morning was in error," said the Amazon spokeswoman. "There is no change to our TikTok policies right now."
"The TikTok app is no longer allowed on mobile devices that access Amazon 's email because of security risks," the company said Friday morning in its initial email to employees. "If you have TikTok on your device, to retain mobile access to the Amazon email, you must remove it by 10-Jul. You are allowed to use TikTok from your Amazon laptop browser. "The email was obtained and published independently by multiple Twitter reporters.
Recently, TikTok was caught accessing clipboard data when running in the background, potentially exposing passwords or other sensitive information. Because of a new feature in iOS 14, the behavior was revealed, and it's unclear how long it had been in the app.
Since then, TikTok has removed the feature, but the privacy scare has highlighted long-standing privacy concerns about the app owned by ByteDance based in China.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News earlier this week that Trump administration is "looking at" banning TikTok. How the administration might go about banning the app is not entirely clear, and it has yet to act on Pompeo 's statement. Nevertheless, the confusion and recent failures have thrown the TikTok community into a state of confusion that worries about the removal of the app in the US.
A TikTok Special Officer replied to Amazon 's decision to order the App to be removed, stating in a statement: "Whilst Amazon did not send us an email, and we do not yet understand their concerns, we welcome a dialog so that we can resolve any issues they could have and enable their team to continue to take part in our community."
