Experts have raised questions over the handling of Indians’ data by the company that provides customised free digital content primarily for children up to age eight through over 200 gaming apps.
“BabyBus’s gaming apps are massively popular in India and Indonesia,” according to a recent report by data intelligence firm Sensor Tower. They “collectively accounted for a 60% share of (gaming app) downloads in Asia in Q3 2023”.
According to recent data from privacy research firm Incogni, three of the top 11 most “data-hungry” child-targeted apps in the world are from the BabyBus stable. These are Baby Panda World: Kids Games (over 100 million downloads), BabyBus Kids: Video&Game World (over 10 million downloads) and Baby Panda’s Kids Play (over 10 million downloads).
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All three apps are available on the Google Play Store in India.Among the top 10 apps for kids in India, there are four BabyBus apps, said Incogni spokesperson Emilia Dias. These are Little Panda: Princess Makeup (ranked fourth), Little Panda’s Ice Cream Game (fifth), Little Panda: Sweet Bakery (seventh) and Baby Panda’s School Bus (ninth).
ETtechWhen reviewing these apps, ET found that it collects details of the device and other IDs, app information and performance, app interactions and installed apps, financial information, purchase history as well as personal information like email addresses and user IDs. The data is encrypted in transit, according to the Play Store, but some of these apps don’t provide any way for a user to ask for their data to be deleted.
“While India has been proactive in banning popular Chinese apps like TikTok, it’s concerning that BabyBus’s apps have slipped through the cracks,” said India Future Foundation founder Kanishk Gaur, also a cybersecurity expert. “It is imperative to scrutinise what data is being collected, how it is stored, and whether it is being sold to third parties.”
Queries sent to BabyBus remained unanswered.
India banned ByteDance-owned TikTok in 2020, while close to 300 other Chinese apps were halted till February 2022 amid an escalation in border tensions. The home ministry has been pushing for action against predatory loan apps but has also flagged concerns and banned those that dabble in other spheres that are said to originate in China.
While the data collected by BabyBus may seem harmless, the larger issue is how this data is being used by the company to compete with American rivals, he said.
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“BabyBus is not a simple app but has a more extensive, complex product offering that revolves around collection of user data without consent,” Gaur said. “While BabyBus has a lot of content produced through various channels on social media platforms like YouTube, what needs to be understood is how companies like BabyBus capture user data and apply intelligence to it. BabyBus has an aggressive data collection methodology, which could be used for surveillance and evading user privacy.”
Further, its business model of collecting user data without consent can “wreak havoc” on rivals and end up killing the local market and players owing to its sophisticated algorithms that come with predatory data collection techniques, he said.
Gaur called for guardrails and a certain level of stringent moderation by the government to ensure Indian users’ privacy is protected, mainly from predatory apps. He emphasised that there was a need for the government to look into data-hungry apps on a priority basis, as they can potentially pose a threat to national security when used as conduits to entrap senior bureaucrats and law-enforcement officials.
In addition to their collection of apps, which see 100 million monthly active users (MAUs), BabyBus also boasts a library of more than 2,500 videos and 6,600 stories. These have 11 billion monthly video views and 1.1 billion monthly audio playbacks.
Sensor Tower’s latest quarterly report shows that backed by the popularity in India and Indonesia, BabyBus managed to enter the top five publishers in Asia for the first time in the third quarter of 2023. This is significant as it follows social media giants such as Meta, Google, ByteDance and Tencent in the listing.
The advance by BabyBus comes as other massive gaming app publishers, such as Supersonic Studios and Azur Interactive, have experienced double-digit declines and slipped to sixth and seventh position when it came to the overall top publishers by downloads in the Asia region.
