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The Chinese government has ordered the country’s leading ride-hailing platform, Didi, to be removed from app stores due to “serious” issues with the collection and use of customer data. Opened to the public Last week on the New York Stock Exchange.
inside that short evening announcement On Sunday, China’s internet regulator, the China Cyberspace Administration, did not disclose the problems it found, only saying that its decision was based on information reported to it, then tested and verified. The regulator ordered Didi to fix the issues and “seriously protect and expand the security of personal user data.”
On Friday, the same regulator issued another surprise evening announcement, saying: new user registrations Didi will be suspended while authorities conduct a “cybersecurity review”. The agency did not say what caused the review.
This announcement, made just days into Didi’s life as a publicly traded business on Wall Street, caused the company’s share price to drop 5 percent on Friday.
It was unclear whether Didi’s removal from app stores on Sunday was linked to the cybersecurity review, but the practical impact of removing the app from stores is likely to be limited, as new user registrations have already been halted.
In a statement posted on Chinese social media on Sunday evening, Didi offered her “heartfelt thanks” to the government for its guidance and said it would resolve issues “with conscience”. The statement also stated that users who already have the Didi application on their phones will not be affected.
Two moves by the internet regulator in quick succession show Beijing is making a concerted effort to crack down on Didi, especially after the company raised billions in its Wall Street debut.
Didi has been China’s leading ride-hailing app since it acquired Uber’s operations in the country in 2016 after a period of intense rivalry between the two companies. Didi said its service had 377 million active users in China in the year ending March. It also operates in 16 more countries, including Australia, Brazil, Japan, Mexico and South Africa.
Beijing has been ramping up the regulatory heat on Chinese internet companies in recent months, accusing them of unfairly competing against their competitors and using consumer data to profit from them.
E-commerce giant Alibaba becomes Record fine of $2.8 billion in April for antimonopoly violations. Soon after, China’s antitrust authority began investigating food delivery giant Meituan for similar reasons. Other major internet companies, including Didi and TikTok’s parent ByteDance, called before regulators and gave the order to “put the interests of the nation first”.
China’s internet regulator also named hundreds of of the applications says it excessively collects or uses personal data in inappropriate ways. The apps include those created by some of China’s top internet companies, including ByteDance, Tencent, and Baidu. But in these cases, the regulator required app manufacturers to fix the issues within a specified time. It did not instruct mobile stores to remove apps.
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