India Bans 47 Chinese Apps: The Indian government has banned 47 more Chinese apps after 59 China-based apps were banned in the June-end. These 47 Chinese apps were acting as clones of the 59 Chinese apps that were banned earlier. The order to ban the 47 apps was issued on Friday, sources said. Among the newly-banned apps are Tiktok Lite, Helo Lite, SHAREit Lite, BIGO LIVE Lite, and VFY Lite.
India Bans 47 Chinese Apps under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act are some of the most downloaded in the country, with Indians making up the largest chunk of many user bases. The 47 apps that have been banned by the latest decision of the government were operating as the clones of the 59 apps that were banned last month, according to a tweet posted by DD News.
A report by India Today TV, citing government sources, said that the government had also prepared a list of over 250 apps that would be examined for any user privacy or national security violations. It is believed that some top Chinese apps games including PUBG Mobile would be a part of the new list of banned apps. However, the Indian government is yet to release the details pertaining to the development.
The move was seen as a retaliatory step amid the tense border standoff between India and China that led to 20 Indian Army personnel being killed on June 15. State-owned telecom companies also moved to keep Chinese vendors out of their network up-gradation tenders.
“The Ministry of Information Technology has received many complaints from various sources, including several reports about the 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 government had said in a statement on June 29.
