The country’s government is now inspecting the ban on 275 more apps originating in China, including the popular game Battle Royale Player Unknown’s Battle Ground (PUBG) and the music app Resso by ByteDance.
According to a report of the economic times, government officials have created a list of 275 applications that could be violating security measures and user privacy. Aside from PUBG and Resso, the list includes Alibaba’s Ali Express e-commerce app and ULike photo-sharing app.
Press Trust of India (PTI), India’s largest news agency, reported on July 27 that the Indian government has put together a list that bans 47 more Chinese apps, most of which are clones and variants of the banned apps happened in end of June. India moved to ban 59 Chinese applications after more than 20 of its soldiers died in a skirmish on the border with the neighbouring country.
The country’s state broadcaster tweeted earlier today that 47 new apps would join the banned list. These apps are said to have cloned some of the 59 previously banned apps to mount them aTnd fill the gap. While authorities have yet to release the official list, most of the recently banned apps likely have some Chinese connection. Meanwhile, Indian TikTok alternatives, such as Mitron and Roposo, should remain immune to these bans, just like similar ones we recently saw.
TikTok, Helo, SHAREit, Bigo, and Came Scanner were among the 59 initially banned Chinese apps. According to a press release from the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, these applications “engage in activities that are detrimental to the sovereignty and integrity of India, the defense of India, state security and public order.”
Several local media outlets named some of the newly banned apps, such as TikTok Lite, a lite version of the popular TikTok video-sharing app, as well as Helo Lite, SHAREit Lite, Bigo Live Lite, and Cam Scanner Advance.
China-based Apps have found great success in India’s vast internet user base. Before its ban, TikTok had more than 200 million users in the country, while PUBG has garnered more than 50 million players in the country. The ET report also notes that the government plans to formalize the process of banning applications that pose a threat to national and user security. A set of ministries will form a law or procedure to address such concerns in the future.
The Indian government explained that one of the reasons for banning these 59 applications was because “some applications have been stealing and surreptitiously transmitting user data to servers based outside India”. Without naming China, they cautioned that companies may hand over user data to foreign companies, thereby harming India’s national interests.
The Economic Times had access to the internal document and was able to confirm some big names, including the popular multiplayer game from Tencent PUBG and Ludo World, along with AliExpress. Despite its Finnish origin, Supercell, maker of Clash of Clans and Royal Shock, is also under scrutiny as it has considerable investment from China’s Tencent. Other apps on the list include ByteDance’s ULike and the Resso music streaming app, along with Xiaomi’s Zili short video app.
These are other Chinese tech giants whose apps are being considered for ban in India:
Meitu, LBE Tech, Perfect Corp, Sina Corp, Netease games, Yoozoo Global. The official reasoning from the Indian government behind these app bans is the data inquiry and other privacy concerns of users that have been raised extensively. But so far it has declined to provide any evidence to support this claim. Meanwhile, sources from the Economic Times at the ministry suggest there are plans in place to formalize the ban process to keep a constant watch on apps operating in India. This means that we may see more similar bans on apps and services in the future.
At the moment, the scope of such bans is unclear as it is currently application-centric and does not require closing the corresponding websites. Although the TikTok application was removed from the Play Store in India, its website has not been blocked at the ISP level. If India goes ahead with the AliExpress ban, your web store is likely to remain active unless you take the extreme step of blocking all Indian IP addresses and other solutions like TikTok did.