Taiwan Flags Chinese Apps Over Data Security Violations – Source: www.infosecurity-magazine.com

The Taiwanese government has warned that Chinese-made mobile apps pose significant cybersecurity risks to users, including excessive collection and sending of personal data to servers in China.

Taiwan’s National Security Bureau (NSB) conducted random inspections of five China-developed apps widely used by Taiwanese citizens – rednote, Weibo, TikTok, WeChat and Baidu Cloud.

All the apps showed serious data security and privacy failings.

“The results indicate the existence of security issues, including excessive data collection and privacy infringement. The public is advised to exercise caution when choosing mobile apps,” the NSB warned in an alert published on July 2.

The apps were evaluated against 15 indicators across five categories – personal data collection, excessive permission usage system information extraction and biometric data access.

The main security violations observed were:

• Unauthorized access to facial recognition data, screenshots, clipboard contents, contact lists and location information
• System information extraction, such as application lists and device parameters
• Harvesting and storage of users’ facial features

All five apps were also found to send packets back to servers located in China. The NSB said that this type of transmission puts Taiwanese citizens’ data at risk of misuse by third parties, including Chinese intelligence and security agencies.

“Under China’s Cybersecurity Law and National Intelligence Law, Chinese enterprises are obligated to turn over user data to competent authorities concerning national security, public security, and intelligence. Such a practice would pose a significant security breach to the privacy of Taiwanese users, which could lead to data collection by specific Chinese agencies,” the NSB noted.

TikTok Bans by Western Governments

A number of other nations, such as the UK, Canada, US and EU, have expressed concerns over data-sharing practices of Chinese-owned apps, particularly TikTok.

This has resulted in the TikTok social media app being banned on government devices in a number of countries.

There are suspicions that the Chinese government has, or will attempt to, use the data for espionage purposes.

In 2024, US Congress passed a law banning TikTok across the entire country, unless the app’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, divested its ownership.

However, the ban has not yet been enforced, with US President Trump granting ByteDance several timeline extensions to find a buyer.