GOVERNMENT BLOCKED 118 MOBILE APPLICATIONS, INCLUDING PUBG IN INDIA
On the 2nd September 2020, the Indian Government blocked 118 more mobile applications including popular gaming app PUBG stating that they were “Prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, the security of the state and public order”. Some of the banned applications are Baidu, Baidu Express Edition, Tencent Watchlist, FaceU, WeChat Reading, Ludo All-Star, Alipay and Tencent Weiyun.
In a statement, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity), said:
“The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, invoking it’s power under section 69A of the Information Technology Act read with the relevant provisions of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking of Access of Information by Public) Rules 2009 and because of the emergent nature of threats has decided to block 118 mobile apps since in view of the information available they are engaged in activities which are prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, the security of a state and public order.”
The ministry said it had received many complaints about misuse of some mobile apps available on Android and ios platform for stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorized manner to servers which have locations outside India. This comes at a period of renewed tension between India and China during the continuing standoff on the disputed boundary in Ladakh which has been ongoing since May 2020. In June the Indian Government banned Tick Tock and other 59 Chinese apps from Play store.
