India Block TikTok Et Al Post Border Conflict With China

TikTok application (unsplash)

JAKARTA - The Indian government has banned 60 Chinese-made mobile applications, including TikTok and Mobile Legends, from operating in the country. This policy was taken after military clashes from the two countries in the Ladakh region, the Himalayan border.

Launching CNN International, India's technology ministry issued an order stating that the Chinese-made application was deemed to have caused concern and had the potential to threaten the security of state data. For this reason, Google and Apple asked to immediately delete dozens of these applications from the Play Store and Apps Store in their countries.

"The compilation of these data, their mining and profiling by elements hostile to India's national security and defense, which ultimately impacts India's sovereignty and integrity, is a matter of great depth and immediate concern that requires urgent action," the Electronics Ministry said. and Information Technology India in its official statement, Tuesday, June 30.

The move comes after border clashes in the disputed Himalayan region earlier this month resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers. This also led to a boycott of the Indian community on products and applications made in China.

TikTok itself is a video sharing application that is popular among young Indians. There are at least more than 200 million active TikTok users in India.

Apart from Tiktok, the Indian intelligence agency also offered the government a list of 52 applications to block. Some of them are WeChat, SHAREit, Bigo Live, Club Factory, Shein, UC Browser, including game applications such as Mobile Legends and Clash of Kings.

It is known that the Chinese-made applications are secretly sending their user data in an unauthorized manner to other servers located outside India. There is concern that this will disturb the state's confidentiality and security.

"India's concerns are not exaggerated, they are valid. China will not be above using these applications for large-scale data collection," said Recorded Future chief executive Christopher Ahlberg.

Previously, India had also questioned the teleconference application Zoom which was deemed to leak state secrecy. In April, the Indian government restricted the use of Zoom for security reasons.

India is not the only country that has taken issue with Chinese applications. Several other countries such as the United States (US), Taiwan and Germany have also paid attention to investigating the practice of collecting data from Chinese development companies.