Amazon has said an email sent to employees asking them to remove the video-sharing app TikTok from any mobile device that can access their company email was sent in error.
The first message was dramatic enough, as the email directive to employees appeared to buttress recent scrutiny of TikTok security issues from governments in the U.S. and India.
Then, the second message, in which a spokesman called the email an error, backed away from what briefly appeared to be a major policy change. It was a rare instance in which such a shift played out in public for one of the world’s most valuable and closely watched companies.
In a statement sent later on Friday, company spokeswoman Kristin Brown said, “There is no change to our policies right now with regard to TikTok.”
Amazon is the second-largest US private employer after Walmart, with with more than 840,000 employees worldwide.
TikTok said the company had not received any communication from Amazon before the email went out.
“We still do not understand their concerns, we welcome a dialogue so we can address any issues they may have and enable their team to continue participating in our community,” TikTok said.
Tiktok is owned by Beijing-based company ByteDance, and has faced questions over privacy and security for its connections to China. Earlier this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. is “looking at” possibly banning TikTok.
A US national-security agency has been reviewing ByteDance’s purchase of TikTok’s precursor, Musicaly, while US military branches banned the app from government-issued phones. Meanwhile, privacy groups say TikTok has been violating children’s privacy, even after the Federal Trade Commission fined the company in 2019, for collecting personal information from children without their parents’ consent.
Last month, a researcher uncovered that TikTok had the ability to siphon off anything a user copied to a clipboard on a smartphone — passwords, photos and other sensitive data like Social Security numbers, emails and texts. The researcher began posting the findings on the online message board Reddit.
TikTok was banned in India in June, and two Republican senators in March introduced a bill to ban federal employees using the app on government-issued phones.
