PHOENIX (AP) — Maricopa County leaders voted unanimously Wednesday morning to ban TikTok on all government-owned devices.
The ban approved by the Board of Supervisors of Arizona’s most populous county is effective immediately.
The resolution protecting the privacy and security of county data comes a month after Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs signed a similar executive order. Prohibition of state devices.
It is the first county in Arizona to do so, said Superintendent Thomas Galvin.
TikTok is a subsidiary of Chinese technology company ByteDance. Galvin said it was too risky for the app to be able to collect the county data easily requested by the Chinese government.
“Higher standards need to be held for civil servants,” Galvin said.
In April, Arizona’s three largest public universities also announced they would ban TikTok on school-owned devices.
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