In the heat of blaming China as the cause of the pandemic and not disclosing the most important data and information of COVID-19, many politicians, industrialist and intellectuals are calling for a ban against all Chinese-developed apps to protect against a data breach. We as ‘the Mango People’ blindly trust them and start to use other indigenous apps. But what people forget is that not all the ‘Indian-made’ apps are safe and that not all Chinese-made apps are noxious.
Ever considered why WhatsApp is banned in China? This is because WhatsApp has never been allowed to keep its server in China leading to concerns of data breach and gathering of private information. But people tend to forget about the data platform, security, encryption and algorithm on which an app is built. Many Indian apps use highly unreliable, ‘cheap’ platform with minimal data security to built an app. This means any data breach can easily occur due to simple hacking if the app is not thoroughly encrypted. In fact, an official has said that “allegedly the cheapest data of any individual is available India’’.
The question is, why are we only focusing on China?
Facebook with over 5.4 billion users is the website/mobile application with the most number of users. But it is definitely not the most reliable site. Between 2014 and 2016, during the U.S presidential election, the Trump-led Republican party used the data-mining company Cambridge Analytica for gathering and channelizing their promotional campaigning advertisements. This company allegedly gathered the data of over 50 million Facebook users to allocate their advertisements for the campaign. An app developed by Aleksandr Kogan allowed Cambridge Analytica to collect personal details of 50 million users of Facebook.
Additionally, if you think Indian apps are more reliable, then you may need to rethink that. A Pakistani-based software developer company called Qboxus developed an app called ‘Tic-Tic’ which is a version of the so-called Chinese app ‘TikTok’. Now the company is allegedly blaming the developer of ‘Mitron’ app who was an IIT Roorkee student, and the claim that the Mitron app is entirely unique. In an interview conducted by News18 with the Qboxus, the developer ‘claims’ that he has sold the source-code, UIs, features and even the platform to the Mitron app for just Rs.2500.
Thus it is important to note that it is not just Chinese apps that are unreliable. Even Indian apps are built on very cheap platforms, wherein the developer can even buy the algorithm, codes and UIs to claim the software as his/her own.
Ultimately, an application or website should be used on the basis of it’s encryption, data security, the physical location of its server, instead of its origin of country. Thus, while the rationale behind banning Chinese application such as TikTok can be justified due to its use of sim-card location information, measures such as routinely changing your passwords, using different email-ids and more should be kept in mind, whether it is for a Chinese mobile application or any other country’s application.
Your data is not safe anywhere so it is recommended to always stay cautious.
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