Add Category
The Cyberspace Administration of China on Sunday banned Didi from app stores after saying it posed a cybersecurity risk for customers.
"Didi Chuxing app is found to have severely violated the laws by illegally collecting and using personal information," the regulator said. It called on Didi to fix the issue with its app to comply with the country's laws and to ensure its customers' safety.
"We sincerely thank the ... department for its instruction in troubleshooting Didi's risks," the company said. "We will rectify and improve risk avoidance and ... provide safe and convenient services to our users."
The ban comes less than a week after Didi went public on the New York Stock Exchange in the biggest US share offering by a Chinese company since Alibaba debuted in 2014.
Several tech companies in the past few months have faced investigations for alleged monopolistic behavior or breaches of customer rights leading to record fines and massive overhauls. Chinese President Xi Jinping has endorsed the probes, setting regulatory crackdowns as one of the country's top priorities in 2021, and he has continued to call on regulators to scrutinize tech companies.
Following these crackdowns, China's State Administration for Market Regulation gathered 34 companies and issued a warning to stop any anti-competitive behavior and ordered internal inspections. Didi was among the summoned companies.
-- CNN Business' Yong Xiong, Shawn Deng and Moira Ritter contributed to this report