On Sunday evening Battlegrounds Mobile India was found sending personal data or at least communicating with servers in China. The game’s app was found sending and receiving data from China Mobile Communications servers in Beijing, China. The servers are owned by China Mobile Limited, a company partly owned by the Communist Party of China. 

© Facebook_MLekhiBJP

The issue was brought to BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi’s notice to which she responded “Damn! Is this correct, will ask @GoI_MeitY to look into it.” The game was also found sending data to Tencent-run Proxima Beta in Hong Kong and Microsoft Azure servers located in the US, Mumbai and Moscow. Having said that, after running the game and using a data scraping app, it seems like Krafton may have fixed the issue for now as there were no traces of any data being sent to the aforementioned servers with the exception of Proxima Beta. 

Damn ! Is this correct, will ask @GoI_MeitY to look into it . https://t.co/JBMZ5jdpUN

It is worth pointing out that the Indian Government banned PUBG Mobile last year for similar practises as the app was found sharing data with servers in China. The game was banned along with 117 other Chinese apps for national security reasons and to protect the privacy of Indian citizens. 

© MensXP_Akshay Bhalla

It could be possible that Battlegrounds Mobile India can get into trouble again if the game doesn’t follow the prescribed rules by MeitY. Krafton also told IGN India  that the company is aware of the data sharing incident and is currently “working to rectify this.”

Battlegrounds Mobile India’s fate is currently unknown as the game continues to be accessible in India for now. 

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