Government of India bans another 118 Chinese apps including PUBG

▸ Back in June, the Central Government banned 59 Chinese apps including TikTok, UC Browser, Weibo and more

The Indian government on Wednesday (02 September) banned another extensive clutch of 118 Chinese mobile applications, including widely played video game PUBG – saying that the move is in the interest of “sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order” by invoking Section 69 of Information Technology Act.

The banned apps include PUBG, Baidu, Baidu Express Edition, Tencent Watchlist, FaceU, WeChat Reading, Ludo All Star, Alipay and Tencent Weiyun, besides PUBG Mobile and PUBG Mobile Lite, and many more.

The latest move by the government came in retaliation of China’s transgression attempt near the southern bank of Pangong Tso as it was thwarted by the Indian Army.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in an official release said,

“The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India 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 118 mobile apps since in view of information available they are engaged in activities which is prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order,”

The Ministry said it 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 ministry further exclaimed,

“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 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.”

“In the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India and security of the State. And using the sovereign powers, the Government of India has decided to block the usage of certain Apps, used in both mobile and non-mobile Internet enabled devices. These apps are listed in the attached appendix,”

Back in June this year, the Government of India banned 59 apps with Chinese links, which include the popular TikTok, Weibo, Baidu Map, Baidu Translate, UC Browser and more.

As for the latest ban, here’s the complete list of 118 Chinese apps banned by the Government of India: