India Bans TikTok and Close to 60 Chinese Apps

During the evening of Monday, June 29, 2020, the Indian government announced the ban of 59 Chinese mobile apps including TikTok. This move comes amid the Indian concerns that the Chinese apps are a threat to the cybersecurity of users in India. The release goes on to mention that the Indian Ministry of Information Technology has received a large number of complaints alleging that the apps are stealing user data and transmitting it to servers outside of India. In this case the Chinese developers and in some cases the government of China is gathering data for their own purposes. The Indian government is attempting to stop the data leaks by banning the apps.

As you can imagine the ban will impact millions of smartphone users in India. We understand the government’s stance on protecting their citizens as they feel strongly that China is a threat to the nation’s sovereignty. However, the use of censorship in banning the apps will surely enrage a lot of TikTok users in India. Not to mention the other popular apps on the list. We’ll share a full rundown in a moment. It is unclear how India plans to enforce the app ban but we would assume they will ask companies like Apple and Google to remove the apps from their respective app stores for users in India.

Taking the ban a step further we would expect the Indian government to work with local telecommunication companies and other internet service providers to block the apps and associated websites. While this will surely curtail the use of the Chinese apps in question, we are already seeing a spike in traffic from India. This means that Indian mobile users are turning to VPN as a way to unblock TikTok and the other Chinese apps. This is not a surprise as the public in India and around the world have turned to VPNs to unblock restrictions for years now.

Controversy is nothing new to TikTok as the Chinese app has drawn criticism from the United States and European governments over privacy issues. In fact TikTok recently agreed to transfer the responsibility for safeguarding the privacy of European users to their offices in Ireland and the UK. They are also expected to update the apps terms of service and privacy policy. Time will tell whether or not this helps quell their privacy concerns but we wouldn’t hold our breathe.

Here is a full list of the Chinese apps that the Indian government banned on June 29, 2020: