Image courtesy of Avery Jennings | The Crow’s Nest
By Aubrey Carr
Access to various social media services, including TikTok, are now blocked while using The University of South Florida’s on-campus Wi-Fi.
The blockage was announced Wednesday afternoon through a system-wide email from USF’s information technology department. In addition to TikTok, Chinese messaging apps Tencent QQ and WeChat, along with Russian services Vkontakte and Kaspersky are also unavailable across USF’s three campuses.
“Use of these applications on university-owned devices or networks is now prohibited, and access to these applications through USF’s wired and wireless networks from personal devices will be blocked unless an exception is granted under the regulation,” the email said.
According to the email, the obstruction is due to an emergency regulation approved by the Florida Board of Governors last week, which called for the blockage of applications that could put “personal information and national security at risk.”
The regulation called for all Florida public universities to take the following steps:
- Prevent identified software network traffic over the university’s network, including Wi-Fi.
- Prevent installation of all identified software from university-owned devices.
- Remove all identified technologies from university-owned devices or infrastructure.
- Prevent the installation of any identified hardware within the university’s infrastructure.
Each individual university may develop its own list of policies regarding exceptions to the ban, but must include components outlined in the regulation.
These exception components include a review by an information security risk team, the university’s information security manager and chief information officer, as well as the implementation of security controls on any device using software that poses a security risk.
The regulation also states that exceptions may be granted to members of law-enforcement agencies if it is to assist with investigations, or other job-related activities.
The University of Florida, Florida A&M and Florida State University have also implemented similar social media bans.
