India has banned 54 apps it says are of Chinese origin, including Sea Ltd.’s marquee game Free Fire, citing security concerns, news agencies reported.

According to sources, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), has identified these applications which belong to major Chinese tech companies like Tencent, Alibaba, and NetEase and the applications include Sweet Selfie HD, Beauty Ca

List of 54 apps banned by India

The 54 Chinese apps include Beauty Camera: Sweet Selfie HD, Beauty Camera – Selfie Camera, Equalizer & Bass Booster, CamCard for SalesForce Ent, Isoland 2: Ashes of Time Lite, Viva Video Editor, Tencent Xriver, Onmyoji Chess, Onmyoji Arena, AppLock, Dual Space Lite.

mera – Selfie Camera, Equalizer & Bass Booster, Tencent Xriver, etc.

 

Recently, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry on February 10 informed the Rajya Sabha that it had blocked 60 Pakistan backed YouTube Channels that were circulating fake news against the Government.

Replying to question on actions taken against fake news and propaganda by the communication agencies, the Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Dr. L. Murugan informed the Upper House that the government has blocked 60 YouTube channels including their all social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram of those channels which were involved in circulating fake news against the Indian government and were backed by Pakistan.

As per the reports of the Economic Times, the Ministry of Electronics and IT had directed app stores and play stores to block these apps as they were ‘transferring sensitive data of Indians to servers in foreign countries such as China’. “The 54 apps have already been blocked in India on the Play Store,” an official said.

Since June 2020, the government has banned a total of around 224 Chinese apps. While 118 applications including the popular game PUBG were banned on September 3, 2020, 59 apps including TikTok, Shareit, WeChat, Helo, Likee, UC News, etc were blocked two months later.  Later 43 Chinese apps including Snack Video, AliExpress, and AliPay Cashier were banned.