MeitY bans the use of 59 Chinese Apps in India

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In a bid to protect country sovereignty and Integrity, Yesterday via a press release, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology bans the usage of 59 Chinese Apps in India. MeitY says using section 69A of the Information Technology act with specific provisions of Information Technology rules 2009 they have taken this decision.

Why has the Ban been forced on these apps in India?

Well, most of you aware recently Indian Intelligence agencies recommend the Government to ban the usage of 52 Chinese apps in the country. The reason is these apps steal and stores user’s data in an unauthorized way in the servers outside the country that poses a threat to national security. Following the same, now, The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, Ministry of Home Affairs sent an exhaustive recommendation to block these 59 malicious apps operating in India.

Following the Ministry order, Google and Apple remove all these 59 apps from their respective play stores. The ISP’s and Telecom companies also have banned the usage of these apps at the network level.

In these 59 apps, some of the popular apps are also present. Take TikTok as an example that has about 119 active million users in India and now has been removed from both the Apple and Google app store. Although TikTok is not present in Play Stores in India, users who already have downloaded this App in the past can use it for now. But that is of no use because soon ISP’s going to ban these apps at the network level and You can see that most of these apps require real-time data which in turn involves permission at the network level to operate correctly.

TikTok statement after the Ban imposed on the App

After the Ban, TikTok infact asks the Government to discuss the issue and says they are in the process of complying with the Government guidelines. TikTok India head Nikhil Gandhi posted an update on TikTok India official twitter handle saying the company complies with all the data privacy and security requirements under Indian Law and has not shared any information of Indian users with any foreign government including China. Seeing the Ban, also now many TikTok creators are moving towards Instagram. Let’s see if there is any possibility remain for the TikTok to reappear on the Play Stores as this is not the first time it has been banned in India.

Now, Talking the other apps that have been banned, below is the complete list of them.