First 59, Now 47 more Chinese Apps Banned in India

Written by: Nitu Chowrasia

Last month on June 29th the government of India banned 59 Chinese apps which included the most widely used app TikTok. Some other apps included in this 59 list were Sharing apps like Shareit, Xender; Shopping apps like Club Factory, Shien; Cleaning apps like Virus Cleaner, DU Cleaner; Social media and Short Video creating apps like WeChat, Helo, Likee, Vigo Video; Beauty, Selfie and Photo editing apps like Beauty Plus, YouCam Makeup; and many more.

These 59 Chinese apps were banned to maintain the Sovereignty, Integrity, and security of the nation. These apps could potentially leak valuable public data to the Chinese government. To maintain the security of Defence of India and public order the instruction to ban the apps came under the section 69A of the Information Technology Act. The government then also stated that there were reports of data of Indian people being transferred abroad without any authorization. These apps were using data in a way that could cause privacy and security issues.

After 59 Chinese apps, today IT Ministry bans 47 more Chinese apps in India. These 47 apps are said to be the clones or replica of the already banned 59 apps. They were on the radar for a long time. And today the news came in of their ban keeping the national security and public interest in mind. These apps do not comply with government protocols for securing data and privacy. These apps are said to collect personal detail of people leading to the privacy breach. There were already complaints of data transfer outside the country without any proper communication and against the guidelines.

The step to ban 59 Chinese apps and now more 47 apps are being called as a digital strike on China provided the India-China face-off that took place on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) at the start of May 2020. The face-off continues to take place despite a lot of bilateral talks between the two countries.

The government is yet to release the official list of those 47 apps that are banned. As per some reports, the most famous video game named "PubG" is also under the radar of investigation to check whether or not it possesses any threat to national security and breach of data. This is because the Chinese company TENCENT has its contribution to PubG. PubG is primarily owned by a South Korean company called the "bluehole" and Tencent is said to have 10% stakes in it. The question of whether of not PubG is on the ban list can only be answered once we have the official list of the 47 apps being banned.

List of 59 apps banned previously includes: