In a move that will further curtail China’s in exploiting the mobile apps market in India, the Ministry of Home Affairs has recommended banning 54 Chinese mobile apps as they pose a threat to the country’s security and a formal notification banning these apps will be issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
The apps that are now being targeted because it has adverse security inputs include Sweet Selfie HD, Beauty Camera, Music Player, Music Plus, Volume Booster, Video Players Media all formats, Viva Video Editor, Nice Video Baidu, AppLock, and Astracraft, and more.
This second major action against Chinese apps and it comes on the day when the entire nation mourns the death of 40 Indian security personnel who were killed in a suicide terror attack in Pulwama in 2019.
Back in June 2021, after the Galwan valley clash, the government had banned 59 Chinese apps including the popular short video sharing platform TikTok, UC Browser, WeChat and Bigo Live, saying they were prejudicial to the sovereignty, integrity and security of the country.
However, India is not the only country that has security concerns about Chinese tech because many countries are finding the tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the form of Chinese tech companies extracting data of their citizens and sharing it with Chinese intelligence agencies such as Ministry of State Security (MSS).
The head of British intelligence MI6, Richard Moore, in an interview given the BBC said Beijing intends to harvest data from around the world. and, “If you allow another country to gain access to really critical data about your society, over time that will erode your sovereignty, you no longer have control over that data.”
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