What you need to know
- Wells Fargo has told employees to remove TikTok from corporate-owned devices.
- It cited "concerns about TikTok's privacy and security controls and practices."
- However, it also said that corporate devices were for "business only."
Wells Fargo has told its employees to remove TikTok from corporate-owned devices, citing both security concerns, and the fact that the phones should be for "business only."
Wells Fargo & Co. said it asked employees to remove TikTok from their work phones due to concerns about the security of the social-video app.
In a statement the company said:
"We have identified a small number of Wells Fargo employees with corporate-owned devices who had installed the TikTok application on their device... 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."
The news follows the bizarre instance of similar guidance issued by Amazon to employees. Amazon employees were told to delete TikTok from any device that had access to Amazon email by Friday, July 10. In a strange twist, Amazon clarified later that the email had been sent to employees "in error".
TikTok has come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks because of privacy and security concerns, in part following revelations about clipboard snooping in iOS. Earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News that the U.S. was seriously considering banning TikTok and other Chinese social media apps in the U.S. stating:
"We are taking this very seriously. We are certainly looking at it.""We have worked on this very issue for a long time."
