Should the US ban TikTok? Can it? A cybersecurity expert explains the risks the app poses and the challenges to blocking it

Posted Mar 29, 2023

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 23, 2023, amid a chorus of calls from members of Congress for the federal government to ban the Chinese-owned video social media app and reports that the Biden administration is pushing for the company’s sale.

The federal government, along with many state and foreign governments and some companies, has banned TikTok on work-provided phones. This type of ban can be effective for protecting data related to government work.

But a full ban of the app is another matter, which raises a number of questions for Doug Jacobson, Iowa State University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and cybersecurity researcher: What data privacy risk does TikTok pose? What could the Chinese government do with data collected by the app? Is its content recommendation algorithm dangerous? And is it even possible to ban an app?

Read Jacobson’s full article in The Conversation here.