It took only two days for the banned apps to disappear from Google’s and Apple’s app stores. The news about this ban appeared on Monday night (June 29, 2020). However, not much information was given on how this ban will be implemented. What Method is India Using to Block Chinese Apps?Īs said by India’s Ministry of Electronics & IT, the Government of India has banned the use of specific Chinese apps on both mobile and non-mobile Internet-enabled devices.
More precisely, there has been “ a strong chorus in the public space to take strict actions against apps that harm India’s sovereignty.” The official press statement also notes that the Ministry of Electronics & IT acted on behalf of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre and the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN), after receiving numerous reports from citizens regarding their privacy. The now-banned apps were accused of “ stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorized manner to servers which have locations outside India.” What’s the (Official) Reason for Banning Chinese Apps in India?Īs per the official press statement by the Indian Ministry of Electronics & IT, this decision was made to safeguard India’s sovereignty and national security. Besides, all of those apps combined account for 5% of total installs from Apple’s iOS App Store and Google’s Play Store in the April-June quarter of this year – with 330 million new installs. The biggest of the bunch is TikTok, with over 200 million users in India. All of those companies are Chinese tech giants, employing thousands of individuals, and generating plenty of revenue. We’re here talking about apps such as ByteDance’s TikTok, Xiaomi’s Mi Community, Tencent’s WeChat, and Alibaba’s UC Browser, among others. In other words, preventing millions of users from accessing Chinese apps will most certainly be felt by China on multiple levels. Instead, this country picked a group of specific Chinese apps with a large userbase. After all, both Google’s Play Store and Apple’s iOS App Store are filled with hundreds of thousands of apps made in China. India didn’t ban just about any set of Chinese apps. Why Did India Ban Only a Set of Specific Apps? To understand the force of this pressure, we need to take a look at some numbers. However, India has chosen a very peculiar and modern approach to put pressure on its neighbor. And earlier this week, as reported by TechNadu, India has decided to ban close to 60 apps made by Chinese developers.īanning Chinese apps might look like a rather hasty decision. What followed can be described as a rapid deterioration of the relationship between them.
#Use an indian vpn series#
A series of events that have culminated with twenty Indian soldiers being killed in a clash with Chinese forces in a disputed Himalayan border area. In June, their relationship was put to the test. In addition, the competition between India and China isn’t only on the political level, as every decision on the part of either of them has long term economic consequences. These two countries are among the most powerful countries in the world, in every possible sense. India and China have had a very strenuous and fluctuating relationship in the past decades, and especially during the last year. What’s Happening in India Right Now? Why Are Chinese Apps Getting Banned?
Google searches for VPN in India surged immediately after the ban was imposed, and have remained above their usual levels, also buoyed by spikes during Indian elections in April and May.So, is it a good idea to use a VPN to bypass banned Chinese apps in India? Will this method work? And most importantly – can you get into trouble for turning to a VPN service for this purpose? Well, let’s answer those questions and plenty more!
From October to December 2018, monthly mobile VPN downloads in India increased by 66% on average, Top10VPN said. But a few months in, major internet service providers Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio also started blocking out the mirror URLs. Porn companies initially put up a fight, launching mirror URLs such as after became inaccessible. In October last year, an Indian court had ordered the government to reinstate its earlier ban on 827 porn websites including PornHub and xVideos. VPNs allow users to mask their location and browse the internet more securely. Mobile downloads of virtual private network (VPN) apps in India grew 405% to 57 million in the 12 months starting October 2018, when India banned hundreds of porn websites, according to data from Apple’s App Store and Google Play analysed by London-based Top10VPN, a website that reviews VPNs. Despite the porn ban, it hasn’t been a dry year in India.