The ministry of electronics and IT on Wednesday issued orders to ban 118 more Chinese apps after banning 59 apps in the first round. The new apps include the popular mobile gaming app PUBG, and apps from the stable of Baidu, Tencent, and Xiaomi.
ET reported last month that the government has prepared a list of 275 more Chinese apps including PUBG which could be banned on concerns of data security. This comes after fresh tensions on the border between India and China.
Baidu: As google is banned in China because the government is strict about the privacy of Chinese users. They do not allow their users to use any third party search engine. Baidu is the only search engine that is available in china just like Russia has Yandex. There were multiple apps which were developed by Baidu or Baidu has invested in those apps
In a statement, the ministry has said that “in view of the information available they are engaged in activities which are prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, the security of the state and public order.
” The apps have been banned invoking powers under section 69A of the Information Technology Act read with the relevant provisions of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking of Access of Information by Public) Rules 2009 and in view of the emergent nature of threats has decided to block 118 mobile apps (see Appendix) since The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, Ministry of Home Affairs has also sent an exhaustive recommendation for blocking these malicious apps, it said. The government had received many complaints about the misuse of some mobile apps for stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorized manner to servers that have locations outside India. “The compilation of these data, its mining and profiling by elements hostile to national security and defense 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.”
Some of the apps in the list include CamCard Business Card Reader, WeChat reading, Tencent Weiyun, Baidu Express Edition among others.
For PubG, India is its largest market, according to app intelligence firm Sensor Tower estimates, generating about 175 million installs to date, or 24% of the total downloads.