The biggest universities in Texas are blocking students from accessing TikTok on campus WiFi

The state’s biggest university, Texas A&M University with 70,000 students announced the banning of TikTok on campus for free WIFI by order of Governor Greg Abbott. A similar announcement has been made at The University of Texas at Austin with 52,000 students. 

Both institutions have begun to remove TikTok Apps from all government-issued gadgets like mobile phones, laptops, tablets, and desktop PCs. According to local news source “The Eagle”, Texas A&M instructed the staff to stop posting, and remove the app and all links to TikTok from university websites in the month of December.

On December 6, with reference to cybersecurity concerns, Governor Abbott issued an order to all state agencies to forbid their employees from downloading or using TikTok on any government-issued gadgets. He states that “TikTok collects sensitive information/data of its users from their devices and offers it to the Chinese government,” as TikTok parent company ByteDance, is located in China. FBI Director Chris warned TikTok users that China could use the TikTok app to collect their sensitive information for spying purposes.

In response to the governor’s order, the University of Houston immediately banned all university TikTok accounts and stopped all ongoing activities. The university scanned more than 20,000 of his owned devices and removed the app from six of them. Whereas Texas A&M Physics and Astronomy Department pointed its 1.5 million TikTok followers towards its YouTube channel. Meanwhile, Lamar University told staff to make all university affiliated TikTok accounts private and delete all institutional information.