Government Reportedly Bans Several VPN Apps From Play Store, App Store

The Indian government appears to have instructed Google and Apple to remove more than six virtual private network, or VPN, apps from their app marketplaces. Among the apps now pulled from the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store are Cloudflare’s popular 1.1.1.1, Hide.me, and PrivadoVPN, which reportedly defied compliance with the Information Technology laws.

TechCrunch has reported — citing an order by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the data on government takedown requests submitted by Google to Harvard University’s database called Lumen — that the Home Ministry asked the owners of Android and iOS platforms to remove the listings of VPN apps immediately. One of the developers whose app has been barred from appearing on the App Store claimed that they received an email from Apple, informing them that the app content was deemed to contravene Indian law and the app’s removal is per a “demand” from the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre.

First-such ban

While a full list of apps is unavailable, Cloudflare’s VPN app seems severely hit by the order. It joins the list of apps that quit India operations after raising concerns about the 2022 regulatory framework for VPN apps. The government has stated in the framework that VPN providers and cloud companies must keep records of their customers, logging in details such as their names, addresses, IP addresses, and transaction histories for at least five years — a move that goes strictly against the idea of anonymity that VPN apps promote. The government had warned VPN service providers to leave the country if they could not comply with the laws.

Following the mandate’s implementation, popular VPN services such as ExpressVPN, NordVPN, ProtonVPN, and SurfShark exited the Indian market, shutting down their servers in the country. Although these services are still available in India, they host user data on foreign servers without an option for an Indian server.