After banning 59 Chinese applications, the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is now analyzing 275 other Chinese applications for possible security threats. Unfortunately, this time around, PUBG Mobile is also under the radar of the Indian government. This is because the Battle Royale game is published by Tencent, a Chinese conglomerate.
So it's understandable that mobile gamers are worried about PUBG Mobile's ban in India. However, Tencent recently updated its privacy policy specifically for Indian users, which may be an attempt to evade the ban in the country.
PUBG Mobile updates its privacy policy
Just a few hours ago, PUBG Mobile started sending a pop-up notification to its Indian users to inform them of their " updated privacy policy ".
In the post, the PUBG Mobile team states that their servers are located in India, the United States, Hong Kong SAR and Singapore. And according to the updated privacy policy, all personal data of Indian users is stored only on Indian servers.
By banning Chinese apps, MeitY wants to protect citizens' data from the hands of the Chinese government. The main reason given behind the ban is that storing user data outside the country poses a threat to the security of the nation.
So, by ensuring that the personal data of Indian users is stored on local servers, PUBG Mobile may simply be able to escape the ban in India. And I have to say it was a smart move that would seem reassuring to PUBG fans in India.
But there is a caveat!
The privacy policy also states that support, engineering and other PUBG Mobile teams located around the world, including the People's Republic of China, Singapore and "India (for users located in India only), the United States and Hong Kong SAR have access to your information.
From the above statement, PUBG Mobile would like to clarify that for Indian users, PUBG Mobile has a local support and engineering team. However, whether 'only' India's PUBG Mobile team can access the Indian user's information has remained quite ambiguous and it depends on how the government interprets it.
So far, we've reached out to PUBG mobile for more details on what that really means, and we haven't heard from them yet. We will update the story as soon as we have a more concrete idea.
Without forgetting the data collection ...
Meanwhile, PUBG Mobile mentioned that it still allows third parties to collect and use users' personal data. Tencent is committed to taking "reasonable steps" to ensure that third parties no longer disclose any personal information. But we don't know how "good" these measures are.
However, if users are concerned about their collected data, they can contact PUBG Mobile to access or erase their personal data.
At this time, it is difficult to say for sure whether PUBG Mobile will be banned in India or not. However, moving Indian users' data to servers nationwide and being more transparent in its privacy policy could help PUBG Mobile escape the impending ban.
