Indian Intelligence Bureau calls out smartphone apps sending data to China

Spyware on smartphones looks to be a prevalent trend. It's so commonplace that users have developed a certain nonchalance to the issue, with the "I have nothing to hide, anyways" stance being one shared by a significant percentage of the population—a worrying fact, especially considering the liberties taken by a number of these data mining platforms. The Indian Intelligence Bureau has issued a directive to national border troops to format their smartphones and uninstall a number of apps.

The apps in question are said to send private data to China, an occurrence that's becoming the norm. Among the apps listed include Truecaller, Wechat, UC Browser, and Weibo. Most of those aren't surprises, as there have been reports in the past about private data violations by those apps. Wechat confirmed a few months ago that it sends user information to the Chinese government; UC Browser had a data violation case with Google a few weeks ago, which led to it being taken down from the app store a while; Truecaller is, for all intents and purposes, built on the premise of collecting user data.

Also notable on the list are a number of Xiaomi apps including the Mi Store, Mi Community, and Mi Video call. Other popular apps on the list include Viva Video, Shareit, BeautyPlus, Clean Master, and ES File Explorer.

Do note that these apps aren't exclusive to the Android versions, so iOS users are also at risk.

Here's the complete list of apps.