India’s ‘Remove China Apps’ removed from Play Store by Google

Google has pulled 'Remove China Apps', which highlights apps of Chinese-origin to help people delete them, from its Play Store reportedly for violating Deceptive Behaviour policy. The app, developed by Jaipur-based OneTouch AppLabs, was downloaded 5 million times since late May.

Remove China Apps now taken down from Google Play Store. Earlier today, we reported that the so-called India rival for TikTok — Mitron app — has been removed from Google Play Store. Indianexpress.com has now discovered that Google has removed Remove China Apps application from Play Store. The tech giant has not confirmed why the app has been taken down or if it will be available again or not.

The developer of the app — Jaipur based OneTouchAppLabs — took to Twitter to announce that the app has been suspended from Play store. However, even the firm didn’t confirm why the app has been removed.

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Google usually removes apps that violate Play Store’s policies. The same happened to Mitron. A CNBCTV18 report noted that the tech giant “red-flagged the app and decided to suspend it for violating its ‘spam and minimum functionality’ policy”. “Another clause of the policy mentions a ‘repetitive content’, which means ‘copying content from other apps without adding any original content or value’ amounts to a violation,” the report further stated.

If you have the Remove China Apps application already downloaded on your phone it will still work for you.

As the name suggests, Remove China Apps application lets users delete all applications on their phones that are developed in China. It scans the user’s device and lists the apps with China as their origin. The app also lets users decide which Chinese app they want to keep or remove.

Over one million people in India installed the application on their phone with the aim to delete Chinese apps present on their smartphone. In fact, until Tuesday morning it was the top-free app on Play Store.

Explaining how the app works Satyajit Sinha, a cybersecurity researcher at Counterpoint told indianexpress.com earlier that the Remove China Apps app just identifies the app developer’s country of origin by comparing it with the repository database of apps developed in China.

Sinha had also said the app is safe to use and one shouldn’t worry about downloading it on their Android smartphone. “The app scan focused on the installed android application package (APK) only. Hence, it doesn’t affect any change in stored personal data,” he explained to indianexpress.com.

So, it’s surprising as to why Google removed the app from Play Store.