Effective July 1, 2023, a new Mississippi state law requires Mississippi State University to discontinue the use of TikTok and other applications developed by ByteDance or Tencent and to prevent access to these applications from both university-owned devices and the university's networks.
What is being restricted?
Besides TikTok, restricted applications include: Alipay, ByteDance, BytePlus, Douyin, SHAREit, WeChat/WeChat Pay, WPS Office, and Xigua Video. Other apps/services may also be included and more may be added at a later date. The Mississippi Department of Information Technology Services maintains a comprehensive list of prohibited software, applications, developers, and other technology for reference.
How will this be enforced?
To comply with this state law, the Office of the CIO Security group will work with ITS Network Services to restrict network traffic to and from these applications on both wired and wireless (eduroam, msuguest, msu3, etc) campus networks. TikTok and other related applications are also to be removed from all university-owned devices.
Users attempting to access tiktok.com or the websites of the other restricted applications on an MSU network will be shown a "Web Page Blocked!" message and will be unable to proceed to the site. Some users may receive an "ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID" certificate error preventing them from proceeding further. The browser may allow users to accept the certificate error and continue, at which point they will be taken to the "Web Page Blocked!" screen and will be unable to proceed to the site. Users attempting to use the TikTok app (or another restricted app) on their mobile device will see the app launch but be unable to load new content (cached content may still be available from a previous session).
What about access to personal accounts?
While these services are restricted on university-networks and devices, accessing TikTok and related applications on personally-owned devices over private, non-university networks, for personal purposes is still permitted. Users can still access their personal accounts with these applications on personal devices while not connected to MSU networks.
If you have any questions or need additional assistance regarding this matter, please Contact the ITS Service Desk.