Tik Tok and WeChat  to be banned from US app stores from Sunday

The US Department of Commerce said it would bar people in the US from downloading the messaging and video sharing apps through any app store on any platform from Sunday. The Trump administration says the companies threaten national security and could pass US data to China, although China and both companies deny this.

WeChat will effectively shut down in the US on Sunday, but people will still be able to use Tik Tok as normal until 12 November when it could also be fully banned unless a planned partnership between Oracle and Tik Tok owner ByteDance is agreed and approved by President Trump.

“At the President’s direction, we have taken significant action to combat China’s malicious collection of American citizens’  personal data” the US Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement. The department did acknowledge that the threats posed by WeChat and TikTok were not identical but said each collected “vast swathes of data from users, including network activity, location data, and browsing and search histories.”

ByteDance  which owns TikTok has denied it holds any user data in China, saying it is stored in the US and in Singapore. Tencent, which owns WeChat has said that messages on its app are private.

While TikTok has millions of users in the US, it is not clear how many of WeChat’s billion users are based outside China.

India has already banned TikTok and WeChat, as well as dozens of other Chinese apps. The government in New Delhi said the apps were “ prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, the security of the state and public order.”