TikTok has been a controversial app for quite some time now. Due to concerns about privacy, plenty of government officials have advocated for a ban on the app. As of recently, United States (US) government employees have been instructed to delete TikTok on all government-issued devices and are banned from downloading it in the future. Several state governments have created similar laws. It is important to state that this will not affect TikTok for anyone other than government employees. 

The reasoning behind this decision stems from the fact that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance. Despite TikTok data from the US being stored in data centers located in countries other than China, such as Singapore or in our own data centers here in the US, some US government officials are worried that ByteDance is communicating with the Chinese government and using TikTok data to spy on other parts of the world. The US is not the only country that has these concerns; other countries, including Canada and Australia, have banned the app on government-issued devices as well.