India Blocks Chinese Apps TikTok, Weibo, Clash Of Kings Amid Political Tensions

The political tensions between India and China are now also directly affecting the smartphone market and end customers. In a surprising move, the Indian government banned a large number of important apps from Chinese developers.

As the Indian Ministry of Electronics and IT announced today in a press release, the distribution of apps that “endanger the sovereignty and integrity of India”, the “defense of the country, security and public order” is now in negative banned in the country. This affects a number of extremely popular software products, including TikTok, the Xiaomi Mi Community App, and the game Clash of Kings.

Long list of popular apps now banned in India

In addition to the extremely popular short video social media service TikTok, various apps from Xiaomi are now also banned in India, including the Mi Community App and Mi Video Call. A number of well-known tools such as Parallel Space, Xender, Shareit, and Cam Scanner are also on the blacklist of the Indian authorities. So far it is unclear whether the government in India is striving to delete the affected apps from Google, Apple & Co stores.

India cites complaints from over 130,000 Indian customers that fear possible shortcomings in terms of data security and privacy protection as the reasons for the far-reaching ban on apps. There are various complaints from numerous sources, according to which many of the affected apps “steal data and secretly transfer user data to servers outside the country” without first obtaining user consent.

By capturing and processing the data captured in this way in the form of user profiles by “hostile elements”, urgent measures are now necessary. The background is apparently border disputes between India and China, which recently resulted in a deadly conflict between troops of the two countries. Due to the strong nationalism, which is also widespread in India, there have always been calls to boycott Chinese apps and other products, to which many people voluntarily joined.