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President Donald Trump Trump signed a decree on Tuesday prohibiting transactions with eight Chinese computer payment applications, including Alipay, WeChat Pay and OO Wallet.
The ban, which also affects the applications CamScanner, SHAREit, Tencent QQ, VMate and WPS Office, aims to limit the threat of Chinese computer applications with the ability to access, through smart phones, tablets or computers, sensitive data of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
“This data collection threatens to provide the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party with access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information, which would allow China to track the location of federal employees and contractors,” reads the decree signed by Trump.
The veto will take effect within 45 days and will affect any transactions through those applications with persons or property underU.S. jurisdiction.
China’s efforts to steal data from Americans show that the country intends to use it “to advance its economic and national security agenda,” it arguments.
The decree cites several cyber intrusions attributed to China in recent years that compromised the data of millions of Americans, including one by the Chinese military to the company Equifax in 2017, which affected the personal information of nearly half of all Americans.
“The United States must take aggressive action against those who develop or control connected software applications in China to protect our national security,” Trump said in the text of his executive order.
The United States has repeatedly accused China of being responsible for cyber attacks against American businesses or institutions.
