Krafton finally opened the early access for its PUBG Mobile alternative Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) in India for all Android users recently. Now, it has been found that BGMI is allegedly sending data of Indian Android players to various Chinese servers, including one owned by Tencent.
Now, for the unaware, the Indian government banned the uber-popular title PUBG Mobile in India last year due to security reasons. Following the ban, Krafton, the parent company of PUBG Mobile, started teasing an alternative version that did not have any involvement by a Chinese company late last year. The developers then finally released Battlegrounds Mobile India, and here’s how you can install it right now if you haven’t already.
However, as per a recent report from IGN India, the data of Indian players is being sent to Chinese servers located in Beijing. The game also has ties with the Tencent-owned Proxima Beta located in Hong Kong (this could possibly be to enable PUBG Mobile account transfer to Battlegrounds Mobile India), as well as Microsoft Azure servers in the US, Mumbai, and Moscow.
IGN discovered the game’s links to China by installing a data packet sniffer app on an Android device before playing a match of BGMI. The data sniffer app was set to log all the servers that the game communicates with during a match. Following this, the publication did a whois search, which is a search engine for tracking the origin of an IP address, for the logged servers.
Plus, one of the notable servers with which Battlegrounds Mobile India communicates the most while playing the game is run by the Chinese state-owned company China Mobile Communications and is located in Beijing, China. Moreover, when the game boots up, it allegedly pings a Tencent server that is also located in Beijing.
Arjun Sha from our team corroborated the report, with Pi-hole set up on his Raspberry Pi 4 intercepting connections to Proxima Beta servers. He used Play Games to log into the game and did not transfer his PUBG Mobile account over to Battlegrounds Mobile India. You can check out Arjun’s tweet right here.
Now, it is worth mentioning that when Krafton announced to launch BGMI in India, it encouraged influencers and streamers to not associate or relate the title with its banned-in-India counterpart PUBG Mobile due to geopolitical tensions between India and China. The developers also agreed to comply with the local laws and claimed to cut ties with Tencent.
However, it seems like Krafton did not live up to its promises, and its PUBG Mobile alternative is not that different from the banned title. Moreover, we already know that even Battlegrounds Mobile India was sought to be banned in India by a party leader prior to its early access release. So, it will be interesting to see how the Indian government reacts when it discovers Krafton’s sneaky initiative to send data to China.
How???
Thank you ?? very very
First of all those who are saying vpn is connected so this article or ign is fake are dumb af. The vpn icon is indicating the app that ign is using as packet sniffer. So the traffic from phone is being sent after being logged.
Secondly, Krafton has confirmed the game was pinging the tencent servers which will be fixed. Beebom should update the article. They just stole it from ign and didnt bother to update.
You guys should do you own research before attacking anyone.
To all those crying “VPN, VPN”: You do realize that VPNs mask YOUR IP and not the destination IP, right? *facepalm*
The picture that they show
Look at the top the VPN is connected
Please see this
Without any knowledge IGN should not do that
That’s very irresponsible
Please, can u see the VPN clearly on upper bar the guy can be clearly directing to Chinese servers not BGMI, Please do your research and don’t become a shouting sheep in a flock
Lol, all you people are stupid, all at the first pic carefully, they are using VPN to make it seem like the data is being sent to China, lol I feel so bad for all the people favouring this BS
There is vpn in 1st page. You can see Prasad Tech in Telugu latest tech news and he did it with his phone and it showed Mumbai and Singapore locations.
Sir he using a VPN look at the upper screen shot you see he is using a VPN
They could have migrated data from Chinese severs to India to do a data migration for connecting the accounts But this is very sneaky or oversight by the PM’s
that i know pubg mobile develops it 100% tencent and not krafton ?
Have anyone notice vpn symbol on the first photo
But, wo vpn kyu use kar rahe hai???
But how?
They are merging our Pubg global ac to Battleground Mobile India
Stupid India and its government
First of all you see they connect VPN ???
Yes
It’s just bcz to transfer the data of all the Indian players…as we can see when we open data transfer it asks for permission for PROXIMA BETA to collect information to send the data to Indian servers…like it is not storing data in china….It stores data on India Singapore through Microsoft Azure platform…these guys who tell to ban game donno what this.
Those argument about “they doing it to check/get previous data” is not valid. They can easily migrate data to indian servers or whole setup in different zone than china if they really wanted to comply with the Indian law. Instead they chose to just change the label to fool Indians while still sneaking data in back
Astonishing , how the Chinese are infiltrating everything through back door, you just cannot stop them. We have to be very careful.
Don’t believe on ign bcoz its a gaming company that’s why he want ban bgmi bcoz it’s game not as popular at all againdt bgmi
I hope you know that nowadays pubg is copying everything from codm. And pubg is only popular in India and almost dead everywhere else
We have to wait till dec 21 until the accounts are transferred also this is not the final released version its still open beta and building
Also you can’t play an fps game with servers located so far. I know its transferring info but to be fair the already have our login info first check what permissions the apps ask so it can’t collect location and other relevant info.
Hy Sir , I install BGMI and also played . but now after its issue happen . what we do ? still play a game or leave it or other .
Leave it . Get to alternatives like CODM if you really wanna play FPS badly .
May be they are connecting to Chinese server to merge both pubg and bgmi accounts. They need to retrieve the data from old accounts.
They could have downloaded the player data themselves and uplaoded it in their own servers! Why didn’t they do that! I love pubg and would love to see it come to India! But if they are not true to our laws and want to sneak out our data still to the Chinese, then I have lost all faith in this spy game! Smh!
Nope, as stated by the guy who sent the pic it started sending data to chinese servers before the game was even launched meaning at the loading screen.
@Sanjay I think you got a legit point!
Which app they used? To find this log information?
Httpcanary
It isn’t available in PlayStore,you have to download it from chrome
Httpcanary by GuoShi
Http canary, well I would prefer to use parallel space with http canary or use Frida(the best). 🙂
First of all the images provided by IGN shows that their person is using VPN what if it is related to that VPN
Why are you so dumb? You Indians think everything can be done by a app? Ever heard of pi-hole and rasberry? Do some little research before asking dumb questions lol