Government ministers must be wary of allowing their children to use the popular TikTok app for fear of exposing secrets to Chinese spies, a former MI6 spy warned, as reported by The Telegraph.

Nigel Inkster said that the controversial social media app could provide a backdoor for Beijing to steal secrets from high-ranking members of the Government.

“Where the Chinese intelligence services are very strong is in identifying non-obvious entry points to certain targets. They have shown a lot of skill in this regard: attacking a target from a variety of different directions, none of them obviously pointing to the target, but that will bring them closer to it. This [TikTok potentially being used as an entry point] is something I am sure people are having to think about”, Nigel Inkster told The Telegraph.

He spoke as ministers came under pressure from China hawks to take action again the platform, which has more than 3.5million active users in the UK alone.

In the U.S.,the Trump administration has accused TikTok and others of providing data to the Chinese government, which Beijing and TikTok deny. “The United States should get a very large percentage of that price, because we’re making it possible,” Mr Trump said at the beginning of August.