Indian Government has announced the ban of 118 chinese apps including the famous game PUBG: Mobile. It has done so, in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, Defence of India, security of the state and public order” while invoking Section 69 of Information Technology Act.
This move comes just after the recent border tensions between India and China near Ladakh.
The list below includes 118 apps/games that have been banned from accessing in the country.
“The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has received many complaints from various sources including several reports about misuse of some mobile apps available on Android and iOS platforms for stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorized manner to servers which have locations outside India. The compilation of these data, its mining and profiling by elements hostile to national security and defence of India, which ultimately impinges upon the sovereignty and integrity of India, is a matter of very deep and immediate concern which requires emergency measures.” the Ministry said in a press release.
” The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, Ministry of Home Affairs has also sent an exhaustive recommendation for blocking these malicious apps.. Likewise, there have been similar bipartisan concerns, flagged by various public representatives, both outside and inside the Parliament of India. There has been a strong chorus in the public space to take strict action against Apps that harm India’s sovereignty as well as the privacy of our citizens.
On the basis of these and upon receiving of recent credible inputs that information posted, permissions sought, functionality embedded as well as data harvesting practices of above stated Apps raise serious concerns that these Apps collect and share data in surreptitious manner and compromise personal data and information of users that can have a severe threat to security of the State”, the Ministry added.
With this move, the government aims to safeguard the interests and ensure security & safety of the Indian citizens.
Back in June this year, Government made a similar move where it banned 59 chinese apps including the famous video app, TikTok.