TEXAS —  Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has banned the use of TikTok on any government-issued devices throughout all state agencies. According to Abbott, this order comes amidst the threat of the Chinese Communist Party gaining increased access to important U.S. information and infrastructure.

In a letter to state agency leaders, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, Abbott emphasized the priority of state agencies to protect and preserve the safety and cybersecurity of Texans.

“TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users’ devices—including when, where, and how they conduct Internet activity—and offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government,” reads one of the letters.

The social media platform has more than 85 million users in the United States and is owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance Ltd.

“While TikTok has claimed that it stores U.S. data within the U.S., the company admitted in a letter to Congress that China-based employees can have access to U.S. data. It has also been reported that ByteDance planned to use TikTok location information to surveil individual American citizen,” stated the letter. “Further, under China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, all businesses are required to assist China in intelligence work including data sharing, and TikTok’s algorithm has already censored topics politically sensitive to the Chinese Communist Party, including the Tiananmen Square protests.”

State agency leaders have been instructed to ban its officers and employees from downloading or using TikTok on government-issued devices, including cellphones, laptops, tablets, and other devices that can connect to the internet.

Texas DPS and Texas Department of Information Resources have until Jan. 15 of next year to develop a plan in regards to state agencies utilizing TikTok on their personal phones. State agencies, then, have until Feb. 15, 2023, to implement their own policies regarding TikTok on their personal devices, subject to approval by the DPS cybersecurity dvision.

In his letter, Abbott expresses his hope of making permanent this ban of TikTok on government-issued devices as well as creating similar policies for local governments.

“We must work together to stop the Chinese government’s efforts to collect, store, and distribute Texans’ data and personal information,” stated Abbott in his letter.