new delhi two weeks after the centre implemented a ban on 59 apps citing threat to sovereignty of india 33 were completely blocked but the remaining 26 apps had equivalent websites out of which nine were fully functional 11 of them partially functional and six had no functionality according to a study by a group of bengalurubased researchersout of the 59 apps that are banned 39 also had websitesweb pages dedicated to themselves while 13 of these were blocked seemingly as a part of the ban others were still functional the study posted on a blog called robos of techlaw and policy stated 20 apps did not have a websiteindiachina standoff complete coveragethe researchers tested the website accessibility on ct fibernet in bengaluru karnataka on and before july 14 some of the websites that have been completely blocked include tiktok uc browser helo and likee they shared a list of the nine fully functional websites with toi and all of them were accessible from a web browser using a local internet service provider isps in delhi there may however be some differences in accessibility when using other ispsaccording to the study out of the 26 accessible websites four of them achieved almost completely the same purpose as the apps which rendered them completely substitutable through browser use five of these websites provided mechanisms to replicate complete functionality on desktops eleven of these websites offered limited functionality as they continued to allow user engagement six of these however were mere webpages that directed towards downloading of these apps and offered no functionality it added this means 20 apps are still fully or partly functional via websitesthe government announcement of the ban had stated that the apps violated privacy and data security standards enabled covert transfer of data and used data for activities which are prejudicial to indias national securityone of the researchers sapni g krishna questioned the reason behind the banif the purpose of the ban was data protection that has not been achieved since their websites are still accessible by users some telecom providers and internet service providers may have blocked the websites but the ban has not been uniformly implemented she said krishna added that there is no doubt that chinese data gathering practices are questionable but a ban is not the solutionaccording to astha kapoor cofounder of aapti institute an organisation which works on technology and policy the access to websites subverted the purpose of the ban unsurprisingly a chunk of the apps banned remain functional in varying degrees the purpose of the app ban was obviously seen to be doing something without actually doing very much she tweeted about the studykapoor told toi that since most users would use their personal computers to access these websites their data would still be vulnerable to exploitation there are loopholes in the implementation of the ban some of the apps websites are still functioning and companies can still collect data through cookies most of these websites require users to sign