The State University System of Florida Board of Governors has banned the social media app TikTok, along with some other software, applications, and developers, from use on university-owned devices “due to the continued and increasing landscape of cyber threats.”
In a memo sent to state university system presidents on Wednesday, Chancellor Ray Rodrigues said, “This regulation requires institutions to remove technologies published in the State University System (SUS) Prohibited Technologies List from any university-owned device and to block network traffic associated with these technologies.”
The ban is effective immediately, the memo said.
“Data privacy, particularly concerning student data and faculty research, is a critical priority for the State University System of Florida,” the Board of Governors said in a statement to CNN.
“Therefore, at a March 29 meeting of the Florida Board of Governors, the Board unanimously approved an emergency regulation prohibiting the use of TikTok and other foreign actors identified as an immediate national security risk, across our 12 public university campuses.”
In addition to TikTok, the prohibited technologies include Kaspersky, VKontakte, Tencent QQ, WeChat and any subsidiary or affiliate.
Bans and regulations of Tik Tok in particular, and of social media sites in general, have been mounting.
Late last month, the governor of Utah signed a bill which requires teens to get parental approval to use social media. Earlier this week, the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office, which regulates data, fined Tik Tok for a number of breaches of data protection law.
CNN has reached out to each for comment.
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