Best Chinese Apps Alternatives for Enhanced Privacy

In the recent years, the app ecosystem in the Indian market has been taken over by Chinese apps. At present, most of the top-charting apps on the Play Store have Chinese roots. Many experts claim that Chinese apps collect user data and even some personally identifiable information.

The recent case being Mi brower collecting search queries even in incognito mode and sending the data back to China. Similarly, TikTok has been accused of sending draft  videos to servers in China. There have been many such instances, and all of them have one common thread: user data are sent to Chinese servers disregarding user privacy. As we know, any data that is held in China is wide open to access by Chinese authorities, and that is a major concern. So in order to protect your data, here are the best Chinese apps alternatives that you should use on your smartphone.  

    Best Chinese Apps Alternatives in 2020

1. IGTV(Alternative to TikTok / Likee / Kwai)

Among the many issues with TikTok, privacy has been a major concern for many users. Just recently, four US senators urged the FTC to investigate TikTok because it apparently failed to take down videosmade by children under the age of 13 — a violation of their 2019 agreement. Besides, the advocacy group alleged that TikTok failed to protect the privacy of minors. Apart from that, many users are suspicious of apps that are based out of China because of obvious privacy reasons. TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance– a Beijing-based company — has been accused of sharing user data with China.    

now IGTV isnt like tiktok but has better content, where u can follow your favourite content creators who put mobile first content. Your favourite portrait mode you can consider it more of like youtube but more personalized content.

Instagram has announced the next stage of monetization for IGTV, while it's also adding new digital 'badges' for IG Live, which will enable viewers to donate money to their favorite broadcasters.

First off, on IGTV - Instagram has been working to provide monetization opportunities for IGTV over the last few months, with the first stage of IGTV ads spotted in testing back in February (via Jane Manchun Wong).  

Instagram will share revenue from IGTV ads with creators, which will provide more impetus for them to create more IGTV content. In initial testing, creators received a 55% share of all ads in IGTV content, which is the same rate as YouTube offers. That could help to make Instagram a more competitive space for top creators - or even a supplementary channel, providing expanded opportunities for creators, along with more content for Instagram.

2.Norton App Lock – AppLock Alternative

AppLock is another popular Chinese app for locking apps behind a PIN, password, or fingerprint. It’s run by DoMobile and registered in Hong Kong, outside of mainland China. However, we can’t rule out privacy implications as its privacy policy states that “According to the needs of specific features, we may read (probably not save) your photos, media, and files, use the mobile camera and microphone”. You are basically allowing the app to read your internal storage and have access to the camera and microphone. For me, it seems too invasive for an app locker.

So if you want a secure alternative to AppLock then I would highly recommend Norton App Lock. It has been developed by the popular antivirus provider, Norton Labs which is run by Symantec, headquartered in Arizona, US. Similar to AppLock, you can set PIN, password, or fingerprint to lock your apps. However, the best part about Norton App Lock is that, unlike AppLock, it’s ad-free and offers a clean experience. If you want to learn more, you can head over to our article on the best App Lockers for Android.

install norton app lock :here

3.Google Meet - Zoom Alternative

 

As the coronavirus pandemic forced millions of people to stay home over the past two months, Zoom suddenly became the video meeting service of choice: Daily meeting participants on the platform surged from 10 million in December to 200 million in March, and 300 million daily meeting participants in April. 

Meet is normally reserved for users of the paid-for G Suite service - Google's solution for businesses and education - but to help people stay in touch the company is making it available to any Google account holder until 30 September 2020. Google confirmed that it was seeing 100 million daily users for Meet at the end of April, and since January has seen peak Meet users increase 30x.

What does this all mean? It means you can now get many of the benefits that has made Zoom so popular, including video conferencing for up to 100 participants, the ability to schedule meetings, and the ability to share your screen - which is great for quizzes.

But Google is really keen to push the security of Google Meet, following widespread criticism of Zoom's platform. That means Meets are encrypted in transmission and when stored on Google Drive. Meeting IDs and passwords are complex and randomised and the host has lots of controls to prevent Zoombombing, or Meetbombing, if you prefer. 

Google Meet normally has a 60-minute time limit on meetings for the free product, but this has been waived until 30 September. Want to watch a Marvel movie marathon with your friends? You can have a 24-hour Google Meet while you do it. 

Recently Google added some of the most-requested features for Meet, including a tiled view for up to 16 people on one screen - very Zoomy - the ability to present a single Chrome Tab rather than the whole desktop, an AI-powered low light mode to make your video look better in bad lighting and noise cancellation to get rid of background noise.

install google meet :here

4. Files by Google (Alternative to SHAREit, Xender)

ShareIt started as a file transfer application, but now it has pivoted to a content platform just like Helo and ShareChat. As a result, the app has moved from its primary goal and now mostly caters to content creators. In my brief usage, I found many inappropriate contents on its app and I would really not recommend it for anything, let alone file transfer. Similarly, Xender has been bloated with too many features like social media downloader and Game Center. Not to mention, the constant ads and popup make the experience worse.

Apart from that, ShareIt was found with two security vulnerabilities last year that allowed attackers to download content from a user’s device by evading the device authentication mechanism. Along with that, data like Facebook tokens and cookies were also transferred. So if you want an alternative to these Chinese apps like SHAREit then I have only one recommendation: Files by Google. It can act as your file manager too and you can seamlessly send and receive files without any ad or content notification. Files by Google is also quite fast and can go up to 150Mbps while transferring files.

install files from google :here

5.ProtonVPN – TurboVPN Alternative

TurboVPN is a free VPN app that has quickly garnered wide popularity because of no speed restriction and no data limit. It’s run by a company named Innovative Connecting which is based out of Singapore. However, if you look closely, the company has deep roots with China, as revealed by Security Affairs. On top of that, the privacy policy of TurboVPN is sketchy at best and I would not really trust it.

So if you want an alternative to this Chinese VPN app then I would recommend ProtonVPN. It’s a free VPN without any data limit and offers a good selection of VPN servers around the world. While there is some restriction in data speed, I have found that it performs quite well without much throttling. As the company is headquartered in Switzerland, you are protected by the EU’s strong privacy laws. Also, ProtonVPN recently open-sourced its VPN tool which makes it one of the most trusted VPNs out there.

install protonvpn :here

6. Brave Browser - UC Browser Alternative

UC Browser, owned by Alibaba Group of China, is the second most popular web browser across India and China, but it has had many security and privacy controversies in the past few years. In 2015, Citizen Lab published a detailed study that underlined glaring security vulnerabilities and privacy gaps within the app. The report concluded that personally identifiable information of users where sent to Umeng, an Alibaba analytics tool without any encryption. Further, precise location data were also transmitted to AMAP, an Alibaba mapping tool in China. UC Browser released a new build quickly to fix those issues, but after further evaluation, Citizen Lab stated that many of the issues were still not fixed. Other than that, UC Browser came under the Indian govt’s scanner for alleged data theft in 2017 after the University of Toronto flagged the DNS retention issue.

Brave for Android is a security and privacy-focused browser. Additionally, the Brave browser can automatically redirect unsecured pages to HTTPS using HTTPS Everywhere while also blocking ads and other trackers. Brave also has built-in data optimization techniques to minimize data consumption. Other features of Brave include, but are not limited to, private browsing, script blocking, 3rd party cookie blocking, etc

install brave browser :here

7.Adobe Scan – CamScanner Alternative

CamScanner is s popular document scanner app and it’s run by INTSIG, a Chinese company based in Shanghai. Last year, it was removed from the Play Store after Kaspersky found a Trojan Horse module inside the CamScanner app. The researchers said that “Trojan downloader can download malicious modules depending on what its creators are up to at the moment”. Later the malicious code was removed and the app was back on Play Store. However, we have seen this pattern from many Chinese apps including ES File Explorer and shady publishers like CM and DU.

So if you want to stay away from such malicious incidents that go behind the scene then you can move to a more secure and better alternative.But my personal favorite is Adobe Scan followed by Microsoft Office Lens (Android/iOS). You can pick any one of them and I am sure you won’t be disappointed. You get batch mode, crisp scanning just like CamScanner, OCR, Edge detection, and many more advanced features.

• Install Adobe scan : Here