Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Removes 96 Apps Infringing on User Rights and Interests

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) organized the provincial communications administrations to test apps related to holiday travel and people’s livelihood service on the eve of National Day. A notice was issued today saying that the 96 apps that had failed to complete the necessary platform fixes within the required time limit were removed from app stores.

Some of the removed apps are suspected of illegally collecting personal information, including E-school of Tianjin Yuhua Education, Adam Examination Pass of Tianjin Adam Education, Jingshi E-school of Tianjin Howdo Technology, Yangguang Yuwen of Shanghai YGYW Education, Zhizhigushi of Shanghai AdinAll and Homework Master of Zhejiang Tongguan Education.

The App for Quduguan of Jiangsu Qudu Education had a feature that forced users to use the directional push function. Qisanketang of Guangxi Qisankeji required users to provide more information than was necessary. Xiaomai5 under Hangzhou Jiejing Technology collected personal information illegally and beyond the scope of the business transaction.

In addition, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology found that ByteDance Pangolin Software Development Kit (SDK), Tencent Ads Platform SDK and Kuaishou Advertising SDK had many problems, accounting for 37.4%, 29.9% and 8.0% of the app’s total problems respectively.

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According to Cyber Security Law and other laws and regulations, the MIIT requires app stores to immediately remove apps on the list after the notification is released. MIIT will also strictly deal with the SDK with repeated problems according to law. Companies will need to strengthen SDK self-examination and self-correction.