India Bans Garena Free Fire, App Lock, Sweet Selfie HD, and 51 More Chinese Apps for Security Reasons

India Bans 54 Chinese applications available on the Google Play Store in India as the Government passes an order to restrict them due to data security threats. The government has taken these measures as they have found these applications linked with China that might pose a threat for the nation. The list of banned applications includes a few most popular games and tools developed by big Chinese companies.

Previously, the government has banned a lot of Chinese applications in the same way for security issues in May 2020. The count of the banned Chinese applications since the first ban has increased to 300+ after the border issues between both countries. Google has temporarily blocked access to these applications after the Government’s order on the ban.

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54 Chinese Applications Banned in India

Full List of Banned 54 Applications in India

54 Chinese Applications Banned in India

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has banned these applications under section 69A of the IT Act, 2000 in India. As per the law, Section 69A will provide access for the Indian government to ban any service that differs from the “sovereignty and integrity” of India. The government has stated that these applications pose a threat to the country due to the data that these applications collect with the permission of Indian smartphone users.

The government has revealed that these 54 newly banned applications have collected sensitive data from smartphone users in India by misusing the permissions obtained. Furthermore, these applications have carried out Espionage and Surveillance activities. As per the government’s statement, these applications have conducted malicious activities by accessing the camera, mic, and GPS signals.

These applications as per the reports; collect sensitive real-time data from the users and transfer them to their servers located in China. Although, the Govt. Of India has banned many applications last year, they have given comeback in India by rebranding themselves. One such application from the lot includes the PUBG game that made a comeback as BGMI.

The latest banned list includes some of the most popular applications in the country such as Free Fire from Tencent, beauty apps like the Sweet Selfie HD, Beauty Camera, and other tools applications such as Viva Video Editor, AppLock, and Dual Space Lite.

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