Uproar over ‘data theft’ via Modi app
RESEARCHER ALLEGES PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI’S APP SHIPS DATA ABROAD
Researcher alleges personal data of Indians is being sent to servers abroad |
The Congress and the BJP yesterday again locked horns on the prickly issue of data sharing with Rahul Gandhi dubbing Prime Minister Narendra Modi the “Big Boss who likes to spy on Indians”, and the ruling party accusing the opposition party of “theft”.
Allegations that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official smartphone app is shipping Indians’ personal data to servers abroad have degenerated into a sarcastic back-and-forth online.
Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi mocked the prime minister after a researcher said Modi’s app, which has been downloaded 5 million times on Google’s Play Store, is pumping private information to servers controlled by an American company.
Modi’s party has defended the app, saying the harvested data is being used “only for analytics.”
Meanwhile the app’s makers have quietly rewritten its privacy policy.
The researcher, whose ‘Elliot Alderson’ pseudonym is borrowed from the hacker drama Mr Robot, did not immediately return messages.
Alderson has spent weeks needling Indian officials over security vulnerabilities in the country’s national biometric database, often drawing defensive responses from authorities.
Taking to Twitter after allegations surfaced that data from the prime minister’s official app was being shared without the consent of users, the Congress president said the NaMo app secretly recorded audio, video, contacts and even tracked location via GPS.
“Modi’s NaMo App secretly records audio, video, contacts of your friends and family and even tracks your location via GPS. He’s the Big Boss who likes to spy on Indians.
“Now he wants data on our children. 13 lakh NCC cadets are being forced to download the APP,” Gandhi said on Twitter using the hashtag “DeleteNaMoApp”.
The BJP, however, rubbished the charge and alleged that the Congress chief was speaking a “lie”.
Hitting out at Gandhi, BJP’s IT cell in-charge Amit Malviya said it was his party’s app that was sharing user data with his friends in Singapore.
“Hi! My name is Rahul Gandhi. I am the President of India’s oldest political party. When you sign up for our official App, I give all your data to my friends in Singapore,” Malviya said, mimicking Gandhi’s tweet on Sunday.