Earlier on Sunday, China’s cyberspace regulator ordered app stores to stop offering Didi’s app after finding that the company had illegally collected users’ personal data.

“The Company expects that the app takedown may have an adverse impact on its revenue in China,” the company said in a statement.

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said it had told Didi to make changes to comply with Chinese data protection rules, four days after Didi began trading on the New York Stock Exchange, having raised US$4.4 billion in an initial public offering.

The CAC did not specify the nature of Didi’s violation in a statement on its social media feed.

Didi responded by saying it had stopped registering new users and would remove its app from app stores. It said it would make changes to comply with rules and protect users’ rights.

Redex Research director Kirk Boodry, who publishes on Smartkarma, said the CAC’s move appeared “aggressive”.

“[It] indicates the process could take a while, but they have a large installed base so near-term impact [is] likely muted for now,” he said.

In a June filing, Didi reported revenue of about 42.2 billion yuan ($6.5 billion) for the three months ended March 31. Of that, 39.2 billion yuan came from its China mobility division while about 800 million yuan came from its international business.

Didi has a dominant position in the online ride-hailing business in China and operates in 4,000 locations across 16 countries.

Didi said it would strive to rectify any problems and would protect users’ privacy and data security.

Since late 2020, Chinese internet regulators have cracked down more sharply on the country’s tech giants for violations of rules.

The Global Times, a tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper, said in a Chinese-language commentary on Monday that Didi’s apparent “big data analysis” capability could pose risks to the security of individuals’ personal information.

“No internet giant can be allowed to become a super database of Chinese people’s personal information that contains more details than the country, and these companies cannot be allowed to use the data however they want,” Global Times said.

Didi gathers vast amounts of real-time mobility data everyday. It uses some of the data for autonomous driving technologies and traffic analysis.

In its IPO prospectus, Didi said “we follow strict procedures in collecting, transmitting, storing and using user data pursuant to our data security and privacy policies”.

A senior Didi executive said on Saturday that the company stored all China user and roads data at servers in the country and it was “absolutely not possible” that it passed data to the United States.

Founded by Will Cheng in 2012, the company had previously been subject to regulatory probes in China over safety and its operating license.