Media: Chinese authorities temporarily banned Tencent from releasing new applications and updating existing ones

The industrial giant Tencent is facing problems at home. For an indefinite period, he was banned from publishing new applications in China and updating old ones. The reason for this was “violation of the interests and rights of users.”

This is reported by a number of Chinese media, including the South China Morning Post business portal. According to them, such an order was received from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China (MIIT).

It is not specified which specific user interests Tencent applications violated. Perhaps the regulator was not satisfied with the level of personal data protection. In early November, a law came into force in China that banned Internet companies from tracking users’ personal data without good reason and obliged them to limit themselves to collecting “the minimum necessary information.”

On November 3, MIIT named 38 applications that did not comply with the requirements. The list of violators included three Tencent services — Tencent News, QQ Music and a karaoke application. It is unknown if the company fixed the problem then.

MIIT has not officially published or commented on the current ban. But Tencent itself indirectly confirmed the existence of the decree that it received from the department.

“We are doing everything possible to maintain a high level of security for users. We also cooperate with the authorities and comply with all requirements. Now our applications are still available for download and continue to work,” Tencent said in a statement.

Over the past few hours, Tencent shares have fallen by 1.87%. At the opening of trading, they cost 474 Hong Kong dollars ($60.79), and the maximum price tag today reached 480 Hong Kong dollars ($61.56). At the time of writing the news, the value of Tencent shares dropped to 472.2 Hong Kong dollars ($60.5).