India Demands Google and Apple to Remove Several VPN Apps Including Cloudflare for Non-compliance with User Authentication Regulations

In September 2022, the VPN / Virtual Private Network / Encryption Tunnel policy designated by India's Computer Emergency Response Team began to be implemented within India . Due to this new policy, several VPN applications were requested by the Indian government to be removed from the Apple and Google app stores.

The affected applications include, but are not limited to, Cloudflare's free app 1.1.1.1, Hide.me, and Privado VPN. These applications were removed following instructions from the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Center, under the Ministry of Home Affairs, to Google and Apple, who then complied with the request.

The reason given by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Center is that these applications violated Indian laws. According to Indian regulations, VPN providers must retain user logs for five years and share connection data with the Indian government, or allow government agencies to access data to check users' connections and real identities.

To comply, VPN providers must also collect users' real names, email addresses, and phone numbers for real-name authentication; collect users' IP addresses at registration and the IP addresses assigned during connection, retaining these data for future reference.

Developers facing non-compliance with Indian government regulations could be subject to criminal liability, leading many to exit the Indian market or only maintain existing users without selling to new users in India.

Despite strong opposition from most VPN providers, the Indian government anticipated such resistance and insisted on compliance by threatening criminal charges.

In response, most non-Indian VPN providers decided to withdraw from the Indian market or remove servers located in India, continuing to serve users with foreign IP addresses and choosing to disregard Indian regulations.

As a consequence, the Indian government can demand the removal of these apps from stores, affecting Android users less as they can still sideload apps, while iPhone users face more significant installation and usage challenges.

The main goal of the Indian government's new policy is to combat crimes involving pornography, especially child pornography, where criminal groups use VPNs to hide their identities while providing or accessing child pornography content.

Child pornography is a serious crime in India, as it is in most countries/regions, and the Indian government hopes to combat this crime with its new policy.