In April this year, the home ministry had issued an advisory on use of Zoom on the recommendation of the national cybersecurity agency – Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-in). India wasn’t the first country to restrict use of Zoom within the government.
Taiwan has banned government agencies from using Zoom, the German Foreign Ministry restricts its use of Zoom to emergency situations on personal computers while the United States Senate advises members to use other platforms. The company had responded to the home ministry advisory, insisting that it was serious about user security.
Indian intelligence agencies have flagged at least 52 mobiles apps from China and asked the government to either block them or issue advisory for people to not use them, Hindustan Times has reported while attributing sources.
The list includes popular apps such as video conferencing platform Zoom, TikTok, SHAREit, UC Browser, and WeChat.
The agencies said that the apps were not safe to use and could be transferring important data outside India. The recommendation has also been backed by the National Security
Council Secretariat that said the apps were possibly a threat to country’s security, according to a senior government official attributed in the report.
While no decision has been taken yet, “discussions on the recommendations are continuing”, an official was quoted as saying in the report. He said, the threat parameters licked to each app are subject to evaluation one by one.
List of the apps that are on the radar of the intelligence agencies is given below:-
TikTok, Vault-Hide, Vigo Video, Bigo Live, Weibo
WeChat, SHAREit, UC News, UC Browser
BeautyPlus, Xender, ClubFactory, Helo, LIKE
Kwai, ROMWE, SHEIN, NewsDog, Photo Wonder
APUS Browser, VivaVideo- QU Video Inc
Perfect Corp, CM Browser, Virus Cleaner (Hi Security Lab)
Mi Community, DU recorder, YouCam Makeup
Mi Store, 360 Security, DU Battery Saver, DU Browser
DU Cleaner, DU Privacy, Clean Master – Cheetah
CacheClear DU apps studio, Baidu Translate, Baidu Map
Wonder Camera, ES File Explorer, QQ International
QQ Launcher, QQ Security Centre, QQ Player, QQ Music
QQ Mail, QQ NewsFeed, WeSync, SelfieCity, Clash of Kings
Mail Master, Mi Video call-Xiaomi, Parallel Space
Indian intelligence agencies have asked the government to block or advise people to stop use of 52 mobile applications linked to China over concerns that these weren’t safe and ended up extracting a large amount of data outside India, people familiar with the development
The list of applications sent by the security establishment to the government include video conferencing app Zoom, short-video app TikTok, and other utility and content apps such as UC browser, Xender, SHAREit and Clean-master.
A senior government official said the recommendation of the intelligence agencies had recently been supported by the National Security Council Secretariat, which felt these could be detrimental to India’s security.
52 Chinese Mobile Apps : Intel agencies red-flag use of 52 mobile apps with links to China: Complete list
52 Chinese Mobile Apps
No comments:
Post a Comment