Alibaba’s UC Browser under govt scanner over data leaks
NEW DELHI: Alibaba's UC Browser has come under the government's scanner for alleged leak of mobile data of its Indian users and may be banned in the country if found guilty, a senior IT ministry official said on Tuesday.
"There have been complaints against UC Browser that it sends mobile data of its users in India to server in China.
There are complaints that even if an user has uninstalled it or cleaned browsing data, the browser retains control of DNS of user's device," the officer who did not wish to be named said.
The officer said if the allegations against the browser are established then it may be banned in the country. Email sent to UC Web, which operates UC Browser, did not elicit any response.
UC Browser is part of Alibaba's mobile business group.
Alibaba has made significant investments in the payment bank firm Paytm and its parent company One97. Besides Paytm, Alibaba has invested in e-commerce firm Snapdeal as well.
UC Browser has last year claimed that it has over 100 million monthly active users in India and Indonesia.
As per Stat-counter report at the end of June 2017, UC Browser is second most used web browser in India after Google's Chrome and leads mobile phone segment with 48.66 per cent market share.
The probe by the government comes amid escalating tension between India and China. The Ministry of Electronics and IT actively looking at findings of University of Toronto which has allegedly discovered "several major privacy and security vulnerabilities that would seriously expose users of UC Browser to surveillance and other privacy violations".
The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Hyderabad is doing technical investigation into the allegation made in University of Toronto report, which also mentioned that the browser is mostly used in India and China. NEW DELHI: The loan portfolio of micro- finance institutions (MFIS) increased by 26 per cent to Rs 35,045 crore in the first quarter ended June 2017, an industry body said.
The gross loan portfolio or GLP of Non-banking Finance Company-microfinance Institutions (NBFC-MFIS) was Rs 27,921 crore at the end of Apriljune 2016-17.
As of June 30, 2017, NBFCMFIS provided micro-credit to around 2.08 crore clients, an increase of 19 per cent over first quarter of 2016-17, said the Microfinance Institutions Network (MFIN), an industry association and Self-regulatory Organisation (SRO) for the microfinance industry in India.
"The aggregate gross loan portfolio (GLP) of MFIS stood at Rs 35,045 crore. This represents a y-o-y growth of 26 per cent over Q1 of 2016-17 and 8 per cent over the last quarter," the said the latest report of MFIN.
MFIN CEO Ratna Vishwanathan said the microfinance business has been stable over the past quarter.
"The latest data also shows that there was a minor increase in the total number of loans disbursed by NBFC-MFIS over the last year which stands at 55.82 lakh but the increase in loan amount disbursed registered 21 per cent growth YOY," she said.
Vishwanathan further said that portfolio at risk numbers have also seen improvement which shows that NBFC-MFI business is slowly returning to normalcy.
"However, we will have to wait for another few quarters as we expect it to come back to pre-demonetisation level... We are optimistic about the industry growth in the coming months," she said.
NBFC-MFIS witnessed growth of 19 per cent in number of clients which stands at 2.08 crore towards the end of April- June quarter.
As per the report, the distribution of loans is the highest in South India at 31 per cent, followed by North India at 26 per cent, West India at 22 per cent and East India at 21 per cent.