All Danish universities impose TikTok ban for employees

COPENHAGEN, Denmark

All seven of Denmark’s universities have imposed a TikTok ban on their employees after the University of Southern Denmark joined the other universities in following the action on Friday.

Thomas Buchvald Vind, the university’s director, in a press release, said the decision was taken on the strong recommendation of the Danish Centre for Cybersecurity. The department earlier recommended that the government employees should not have TikTok installed on their mobiles, tablets or any other communication devices due to privacy concerns.

"At the same time, the Rector's Office has decided that the faculties and other administrators should not use TikTok for marketing, as SDU is also stopped giving support to TikTok," said the press release.

The Technical University of Denmark, Roskilde University, Copenhagen University, the IT University of Copenhagen, and Copenhagen Business School, and Aarhus University, have already announced TikTok bans.

The TikTok bans in universities came after Danish parliamentarians were strongly urged to uninstall the app from their work devices earlier in February.

A parliamentary press release said the call was based on recommendations from the Center for Cyber Security (CFCS). “When the CFCS estimates there is a risk of espionage by using TikTok, then we adhere to that. We thereby follow the line that the center has set regarding state institutions,” said Parliament Speaker Soren Gade.

Meanwhile, the EU has also moved to ban TikTok on official work phones, and a number of the US states have also put a ban on the app service.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance – a Chinese firm suspected by Western authorities of passing on users' data to the Chinese government. The firm has maintained that the bans on it are based on a “basic misunderstanding of our corporate structure.”