Canada’s chief cybersecurity officer warned Canadians to be careful when using apps that could put their data in the “bad hands”.
Ottawa [Canada]: Canada’s chief cybersecurity officer warned Canadians to be careful when using apps that could put their data in the “bad hands”. The warning comes as her Chinese-owned social media app TikTok faces data harvesting allegations from around the world.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last month that Canada’s e-espionage agency is paying attention to security threats posed by Tik Tok. In the neighboring US, a Republican senator moved to ban his TikTok earlier this month. Worldwide he is said to have over 1 billion users, Tik To is widely popular in both the United States and Canada. “You have to ask yourself, do they need access to that information? Why would an application need access to all of their contact lists? Why do I need access to etc. [texts]?” Sami Khoury, director of the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) Canada Cyber Security Center, told CBC News:
Khoury said Canadians should be aware of what they are agreeing to when downloading an application. He added that he should ask if he would allow access to personal data.
“You put my 200 on top of that, risk connecting. [contacts] With your 200, you have a collection of… information. In some cases, they land in locations that are not subject to the same rule of law principles. [and] Respect for human rights,” he told CBC News.
Prime Minister Trudeau said last month that Canada’s foreign intelligence agency, the Communications Security Agency, was alert to security threats from TikTok.
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“I think people are interested in TikTok. I think people are obviously watching very closely,” he said. “CSE is one of the best cybersecurity agencies in the world and we monitor it very closely.”
TikTok, whose parent company ByteDance is based in China, has been accused of actively collecting data from around the world. The neighboring United States has banned government employees from using the app on government-issued devices due to national security concerns.
Earlier, the Chinese app had been banned from House-controlled electronic devices, according to an internal notice sent to House officials.
The move comes after dozens of US states have implemented their own bans on TikTok on government devices in recent months, CNN reported.
(Except for the headlines, this article is unedited by HW News staff and published from a syndicated feed.)
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