You Are Worried Because FaceApp Is Russian, But How Many Apps In Your Phone Are Really Indian?

Now that FaceApp is viral again, that means people are also talking about how dangerous it is to sign away your data like that.

It can be, though not as much as our own government systems, but it's not by far the only foreign app you're giving data to.

(L) Reuters (R) FaceApp

For instance, take some of the top-performing apps in India. At the moment, at the top of the list (courtesy SensorTower) of free apps is FaceApp. In case you don't already know FaceApp is a Russia-based app, founded by Yaroslav Goncharov. The thing is, FaceApp's policies aren't that much worse than others of its kind in the US and elsewhere. Some of the paranoia however comes from the Russia link, which is a country that's previously been linked to other surveillance and spying attempts using freemium apps and software.

The Russia Connect

But take some others on the list. Obviously, some of the major names like Facebook, Google Pay, WhatsApp, and others are based in the US, so your data is going there. They may not be as out-and-out of a security risk as other surveillance-heavy nations, but they're still risks -- as your data resides in a foreign server somewhere, far away from any sense of meaningful control.

SensorTower

The other two major apps to consider though are the other AI-based editing app Prisma, and dating app Bumble. The former is based in the US, the CEO being Alexey Moiseenkov. The latter has an American founder and CEO, however it was launched in partnership with Badoo, a Russian company headed by Andrey Andreev. That's not a problem per se, merely an observation of how opaque these companies usually are to the average user.

And then you get to the Chinese apps. Hoo boy.

China App Flood

First let's take the big names. TikTok for instance is a product of China-based ByteDance. PUBG Mobile meanwhile is a product of Tencent Games, also based in the same country.

Wikimedia Commons

The same goes for another apparently popular free app, Helo. The company behind it is Toutiao, which is a ByteDance subsidiary. UC Browser meanwhile is offered by UCWeb, in which Chinese Internet giant Alibaba is a major investor.

SHAREit and VMate, two other popular free apps in India, are also based in China.

Indian apps...

And what about India apps? Well there are plenty of them, just not really in the top lists. We found just four in the top 20, two of which are Hotstar and Saavn, products of major companies. The other two we spotted were Ludo King, based in Navi Mumbai, and ShareChat, based in Bangalore.

Thanks to the way the the app ecosystem has developed, here in India we're heavily reliant on products from other countries. There are plenty of apps made in India, but they tend to be either very niche and therefore not very popular, or blatant ripoffs of successful apps made as simple cash grabs. There are some exceptions to this, of course.

Reuters

Some of those like Flipkart and Zomato are simply smartphone spinoffs of already successful digital platforms. The others however have managed to carve out a market for themselves in India before foreign app makers made their entry. Swiggy for instance was able to establish dominance to the point that UberEats is currently struggling in India.

But in the face of a situation similar to the US-China trade war, where US restricted companies from doing business with Huawei, we'd clearly be the losers. We simply do not have the app backbone to cut ourselves off, or even insist major apps save their data locally. The thing is, we don't often double check just where it is we're approving our data will be sent. In any case, it may be scary that your data is going to countries like Russia and China, notable for their dismissiveness of privacy.

What should be scarier though is the capitalist model that allows apps like these to profit off users, often with no incentive to keep their data private and safe.