India To Block Over 230 Betting and Loan Apps, Many With China Ties

India is moving to block 232 apps, some with links to China, that offer betting and loan services in the South Asian market to prevent misuse of the citizens' data, the state-owned public broadcaster said Sunday. TechCrunch: The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is in the process to enforce an emergency order to ban 138 betting and gambling apps and another 94 that provided unauthorized loan services in the interest of protecting the country's integrity, the broadcaster said. The ministry's move was prompted at the direction of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Prasar Bharti added. The apps sought to mislead customers into taking big debts without realizing the terms and there were concerns that they could be used as tools for espionage and propaganda.

I never!

[guygo]

"there were concerns that they could be used as tools for espionage and propaganda."
By China? Gee, they'd NEVER do that! They've said so over and over. Just like there are no backdoors in Huawei networking gear, right?

Shocked, shocked...

[shanen]

FP sounds like a slightly desperate attempt to create relevance? Especially a stretch to drag Huawei into it considering who's making money from gambling in Macao, which mostly exploits Chinese suckers with money, in contrast to trying to trying to exploit Indian suckers who don't have much. (Was it one of William Gibson's books where the main scammer scraped up lots of lose micropayments from Africa? Or maybe Neal Stephenson?)

Noticing the lack of comments on the story did get me to wondering why, but mostl

Just a reminder

[Big Hairy Gorilla]

That a cell phones/apps arguably are extremely addictive. And the target audience is much much larger than for substances. And gambling often becomes addictive.

CONgrats to India

[WindBourne]

their politicians can put their citizens first, over their GD party politics.