Amazon employees in the US told to delete TikTok due to security reasons

E-commerce giant, Amazon, has reportedly told its employees to delete the short-video app TikTik from their smartphones, citing security risks, said a report by The New York Times (NYT) based on an internal email to employees. The company has apparently told its employees that the app must be deleted by them to “access Amazon email” and employees had till today to delete the app.

It’s unclear whether the order is applicable for Amazon's employees only in the United States (US) or whether it extends to those in other countries too. Mint has written to Amazon for a clarification on this, the story will be updated to reflect the same when Amazon responds to the same.

Further, the NYT report also said that employees are still allowed to access the app from their desktop or laptop browsers.

The Chinese short-video platform has run into trouble with governments recently, starting from India. The Indian government banned three apps — TikTok, Helo and Vigo Video — owned by ByteDance recently. The apps were amongst 59 Chinese apps banned by the country citing national security reasons. At the moment, the government has sent a notice to the banned apps, asking 79 questions. The apps have been given till July 22 to answer the questions, failing which the ban on them will be made permanent.

The Donald Trump government in the US is also considering banning the app. US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, recently told Fox News that the country is “certainly looking at” banning TikTok.

On its part, ByteDance has been distancing itself from China too. Reports indicate that the company is pulling out of Hong Kong, which recently came under a new national security law by the Chinese government. “In light of recent events, we’ve decided to stop operations of the TikTok app in Hong Kong,” a TikTok spokesperson told Techcrunch.