Paris, 24 March 2023 (dpa/MIA) - France is banning TikTok and other popular applications from the mobile phones of civil servants because they offer an inadequate level of security and data protection, authorities in Paris said on Friday.

The ban is to come into force immediately, the Ministry of Public Sector Transformation and the Civil Service wrote on Twitter, which is also subject to the ban, along with Instagram and the streaming service Netflix.

France is the latest in a succession of countries to take such steps against TikTok for security reasons. The United States, Germany, Britain and the European Commission also banned the Chinese-owned short video app on government employees' mobile phones.

US authorities are also mulling a complete ban on TikTok, citing concerns that Chinese intelligence agencies can harvest data from it and influence users. TikTok rejects the allegations.

Worldwide, more than 1 billion people have downloaded the app, which belongs to the China-based ByteDance internet group.