We all know about the Chinese apps ban done in India which created a tornado among the digital life not only destroyed the income of China apps but created new fields for the Indian Apps to blossom among us. Before I explain about various Indian apps that rose to our attention, we all need to know a little details about the security clearances an app posses.
Every apps we install asks for permissions and we simple press accept all without giving a second thought why it asks and what's the requirements.
Let me tell a real scenario to you which it took place on Aug '19. When my cousin and I were talking about ghosts incident, are they real or not! and during our conversation we were transferring a movie to one of our mobiles via ShareIt.
Before our session, ShareIt showed some travel related contents as we were traveling, post this conversation, ShareIt app showed us the ghost related prank videos. We were shocked so I did a research about the app and found out about the ShareIt's AI and the use of microphone. AI is aware of the local languages we spoke and able to translate.
So, further from my incident, let me walk you through how app permission matters a lot. There are some permissions which should be carefully chosen by the user as these details can threaten us to life. An example of this is calendar.
Few among us might think what does the hackers are going to do by collecting my calendar data. If you are an digitized person and you might save your schedule in your calendar. Hackers can sell your data to your competitors which leads to loss of business and they can even try to impose a life threatening incidents.
Similar to these they also try to access your camera, SMS, Contacts, GPS, Storage, Body sensors and Microphone. By providing all these permissions they can even furnish your astrology. Somehow these details found to be outrageous to you when they leak them.
For the entertainment, apps like tik-tok doesn't require navigation permissions but it gets permissions from the user. Once the user install those apps he becomes a victim and not a user. Thanks to the Indian government for addressing this issues, better late than never. Even some Indian apps do ask this unwanted permissions this should be addressed and gathering PI about the user is punishable under GDPR.
One of the banned app company from play store is cheetah keyboard, a cmcm company from Beijing. This company owns the clean master and the CM browser. The cheetah keyboard captures your DTMF tones(sounds produced by the keys/smartphone when pressed) and they decode them to capture your card details which sound frightening to me. As the data centers of these are located at china they can easily disclose to their government which has also happened earlier in the case tik-tok, they sold their data to alibaba group and tencent group(cybersecurity based company and inventor of Pubg mobile). In case of Indian app these data centers are maintained with India and they can be safe compare to them.
Here are the Top 10 Indian apps that steeped the downloads curve within few weeks after the Ban.
1. Kaagaz
This a document scanning app. An alternative for CamScanner. It is a better alternative not because of the ban but the security it provides to the users. The co-founder states that, the documents that are scanned by our users are uploaded in cloud service with no need for internet. This app was uploaded two weeks before the ban and it happens to be they were at the right place at the right time. It was downloaded over 1L+ in just one day.
2. Z-Share
A file sharing app, which saw a 10K+ downloads in a day and a 100K+ overall downloads. An interesting story about this app was, it was developed by a 21-year-old final year BCA student, Shravan Hedge who says, this app is faster in sharing files and it requires less permission when compared with any other similar apps, especially ShareIt. Let's just look over the permissions taken by the share apps in a video to get to know about more security concerns.
3. Indian Air Force: A Cut Above
A gaming app, which was launched on July '19. At that time it had about 450K+ downloads and the ban boosted a 1M+ downloads within a week. Addition of Multiplayer update aiming the ban made its fan happy and made a steep curves in gaining new users. It is entirely made or developed by Indian Company and they, like many other developers, are ensuring the safety and security.
4. Chingari
A short video based app, similar to tik tok. It saw a 5M+ in 3 days not only by the ban but also for its user friendly interface it holds. Features like, Hot News, Entertainment News, Love Quotes, Poems, Memes, Good morning SMS, were handy among the users. Currently, A 10M+ downloads are done and seems to be increasing.
5. Roposo
This is a video-sharing platform app, launched in 2014, but it became a top free app after the banning. It's It's user base rose to 22M in 2 days. It has 25+ channels coming with various regional languages, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and many more. Arguably it's a better alternative for tik tok because of the downloads, having a 50M+ and counting.
6. Mitron
A tik tok alternative, yeah! It has a very similar theme of tik tok but with better features and innovative themes, which gives a easy and seamless interface for the users. The founder and CEO, Shivnak Agarwal, says that, it is more Secure and viable which collects minimal information from our users. It saw a 5M+ downloads in 4 days with 10M+ overall.
7. möJ
India's Share Chat app, much likely to its predecessor, garnered over 10M+ users, which was launched within a week of the ban. Short videos are made with new and various stickers, emojis and special effects.
8. Hike Messenger
A sticker chat messenger app, which was the 1st Indian messenger app founded in 2012 by Kavin Barathi Mittal. The sticker chat app was launched in 2018. The Only-Indian-Made-Use fever gave a slight rise in downloads. Around 3M+ installs occurred after the ban and now with a total of 10M+ users.
9. Trell
A lifestyle app which enables its user to make a 5-minute vlogs. It saw over a million downloads within a week and with its new update it has 10M+ downloads. Also has different features like, skincare, fitness, travel, home decor, movies, to share the experiences they endure in their lifestyles.
10. Aisle -- Indian Dating app
A relationship-focused app targeted only for Indians. The banning gave a rise in users from 10K+ from its launch to 1M+ till date. The security it provides were prominent, says it's tech-support.
This banning not only made these developers pockets deep but also paved a promising way for the startups and existing developers to grow in their field. To conclude, there are few points I'd like to address,
China has the world's best AI search engine on facial recognition, by collecting these data's they can able to build multiple faces and hide a important persons if they wish.. This is the connecting dots to all your Chinese app bans.
Negligence is one among a harsh act we let it happen which must be acknowledged and neglected, when it comes to support others to grow so we support ourselves. It's not hard to take the first step to find things that are continue to exist but we find it hard without trying. As C S Lewis once said "You never knew what you can do until you try, and very few try unless they have to."
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