Taiwan’s National Security Bureau (NSB) has warned that China-developed functions like RedNote (aka Xiaohongshu), Weibo, TikTok, WeChat, and Baidu Cloud pose safety dangers attributable to extreme information assortment and information switch to China.
The alert comes following an inspection of those apps carried out in coordination with the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB) and the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) below the National Police Agency.
“The outcomes point out the existence of safety points, together with extreme information assortment and privateness infringement,” the NSB stated. “The public is suggested to train warning when selecting cellular apps.”
The company stated it evaluated the apps in opposition to 15 indicators spanning 5 broad classes: Personal information assortment, extreme permission utilization, information transmission and sharing, system data extraction, and biometric information entry.
According to the evaluation, RedNote violated all 15 indicators, adopted by Weibo and TikTok that had been discovered to breach 13 indicators. WeChat and Baidu Cloud violated 10 and 9 of the 15 indicators, respectively.
These points encompassed intensive assortment of non-public information, together with facial recognition data, screenshots, clipboard contents, contact lists, and placement data. All the apps have additionally been flagged for harvesting the listing of put in apps and system parameters.
“With regard to information transmission and sharing, the stated 5 apps had been discovered to ship packets again to servers positioned in China,” the NSB stated. “This kind of transmission has raised severe considerations over the potential misuse of non-public information by third-parties.”
NSB additionally identified that corporations working in China are obligated to show over person information below home legal guidelines for nationwide safety, public safety, and intelligence functions, and that utilizing these apps can breach the privateness of Taiwanese customers.
The improvement comes as nations like India have enacted bans in opposition to Chinese-made apps, citing safety considerations. In November 2024, Canada ordered TikTok to dissolve its operations within the nation, though its destiny within the U.S. nonetheless stays in limbo, because the ban – which was imagined to take impact in January 2025 – has been prolonged for a 3rd time.
Last week, one in every of Germany’s information safety authorities urged Apple and Google to take away Chinese synthetic intelligence (AI) chatbot DeepSeek from their respective app shops attributable to illegal person information transfers to China. Similar restrictions have additionally been imposed by different nations.
“The NSB strongly advises the general public to stay vigilant relating to cellular system safety and keep away from downloading China-made apps that pose cybersecurity dangers, in order to guard private information privateness and company enterprise secrets and techniques,” it added.