Eight Chinese apps banned by the US government after President Donald Trump signed an executive order. The apps are said to threaten US national security and foreign policy. It strongly emphasizes that these mobile applications may access and steal personally identifiable information from users.
“By accessing personal electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, and computers, Chinese connected software applications can access and capture vast swaths of information from users, including sensitive personally identifiable information and private information. This data collection threatens to provide the Government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — which would permit China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors and build dossiers of personal information.” – Whitehouse.
“For example, the 2014 cyber intrusions of the Office of Personnel Management of security clearance records of more than 21 million people were orchestrated by Chinese agents,” the order noted. “In 2015, a Chinese hacking group breached the United States health insurance company Anthem, affecting more than 78 million Americans. And the Department of Justice indicted members of the Chinese military for the 2017 Equifax cyber intrusion that compromised the personal information of almost half of all Americans.” – The report said.
” In fact, the Government of India has banned the use of more than 200 Chinese connected software applications throughout the country; in a statement, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology asserted that the applications were stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorized manner to servers which have locations outside India.”
The eight Chinese apps banned include Alipay, CamScanner, QQ Wallet, SHAREit, Tencent QQ, VMate, WeChat Pay and WPS Office. The ban takes effect 45 days from January 5, 2021.
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