India Bans 59 Chinese Apps: Might Be A Permanent Ban
In the wake of a massive spike in tensions between India and China following the Galwan Valley clash, The Government of India has announced a ban on 59 Chinese Apps including most popular TikTok, UC Browser, CamScanner, ShareIt, etc.
Indian government officials said they plan to impose higher trade
barriers and raise import duties on around 300 products from China. India currently has a $59.3bn trade deficit with China, with 11% of India’s imports coming from China. Government has decided to disallow the usage of these apps both in mobile and non-mobile Internet-enabled devices; due to diverting data and compromising privacy of users.
Over the last couple of months there has been tremendous amount of
Information Technology activity from the Chinese sites. The presser notes that the Ministry of Information Technology has
received many complaints from various sources about misuse of some
mobile apps for stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in
an unauthorized manner to servers which have locations outside India.
A government press release announcing the ban stated: "The Ministry of
Information Technology, invoking it’s power 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 59 apps since in view of information
available they are engaged in activities which is prejudicial to
sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, security of state
and public order".
The apps are listed below:
Most of the apps are very famous and have millions of followers from the country. India’s demand could be attributed to the fact that half of its 1.3
billion population is under the age of 25. A younger, tech savvy
audience has resulted in India becoming TikTok’s top market, commanding 45% of the app’s first time downloads in 2019 with more than 120 million subscribers. The video creation app Likee joined this year’s ranking and sits in sixth place, with the majority of the app’s 330 million downloads comes from India. Also Many of these platforms have a huge job market which is going to get impacted.
According to the Government, there were reports over a certain period of time that data was being sent out. An India Today report posted the advisory letter in its website saying “As per reliable inputs, a number of Android/iOS
apps developed by Chinese developers or having Chinese links are
reportedly either spyware or other malicious ware. Use of these apps by
our force personnel can be detrimental to data security having
implications on the force and national security.”
This move will safeguard the interests of crores of Indian mobile and
internet users. This decision is a targeted move to ensure safety and
sovereignty of Indian cyberspace. This could also lead to more countries following India’s path in acting against these malicious apps.
Comments
Post a Comment