TECHNOMICS
Sarahah uploads your address book without permission Cong finds solace in voteshare increase
The Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC) tried to put up a brave face saying its candidates registered an increase in vote percentage from 24.21 per cent from that of 7.87 per cent in 2015 Assembly elections. The Congress said that though it has lost Bawana bypoll, but it is not hopeless. Sharmistha Mukherjee, the chief spokesperson of DPCC, said that the 31,919 votes polled by Congress candidate Surender Kumar in the bypoll was much more than double the votes of 14,846 that he had polled in the 2015 Assembly elections.
“Only Congress is the gainer in the bypoll as AAP and BJP suffered a dip in their vote share. People have tendered huge support to the Congress,” she said.
She also congratulated chief minister Arvind Kejriwal for the victory of AAP candidate.
“In the 2014 general elections, Congress had polled 19,089 votes in Bawana Assembly segment with a vote share of 11.26 per cent. Our party workers worked hard and we were able to increase the vote percentage. All credit goes to DPCC chief Ajay Maken,” she said.
Mr Maken congratulated party workers for increase in the vote share of Surender Kumar.
Mr Maken congratulated Mr Kejriwal for the victory of party’s candidate Ram Chander in the bypoll. “Congrats @ArvindKejriwal for #Bawana! Thanks to @INCIndia workers for working hard-enabling congress to jump from 7.8% in 2015 to 25% votes,” Maken tweeted.
The anonymous feedback app, Sarahah, which has been going viral for the past few weeks, may not be as private as it may sound. According to a report from The Intercept, the app uploads users’ phone contacts to the company’s servers, for no good reason. The behaviour was spotted by security analyst Zachary Julian.
Sarahah founder, Zain al-Abidin Tawfiq, tweeted that the contact lists are being uploaded “for a planned ‘find your friends’ feature” which was “delayed because of a technical issue.” After Intercept pointed out the behaviour, he stated “the data request will be removed on next update” and that Sarahah’s servers currently don’t host contacts. He then stated that the feature was obstructed by “technical issues” and that a partner, who he has stopped working with, was supposed to remove it from the server but “missed that.”
Sarahah portays itself as an app to let users “receive honest feedback” from friends and employees but the app collects more than just feedback messages. When launched for the first time, it immediately harvests and uploads all contacts and email addresses in your address book. Although, Sarahah does ask for permission to access contacts, it does not disclose that it uploads such data, nor does it seem to make any functional use of the information obtained. However, users who permit access to their contacts list probably think it will add some functionality to the app which as of now is nonexistent. There is no friends-list inside the app. Also, there is a search feature, but, you cannot look people up by phone number. Nor there is a section which shows which of your contacts are already using the service.
Security analyst Julian found out the behaviour by using a monitoring software (BURP Suite) to see what kind of data was Sarahah sending and receiving from his Android phone, a Galaxy S5 running on Android 5.1.1. The information consisted of “all of your email and phone contacts.” He later determined the same occurrence on the Apple iOS platform as well.
Uploading of contact lists is not all that uncommon of a behaviour and is often used in legitimately helpful ways. But this is something that apps should not do unless users are getting something out of it. Either way, people tend to get unhappy when their personal data is used in ways they weren’t made aware of.
However, most of the newer Android operating systems, starting with Android 6.0 (“Marshmallow”) do allow for more granular permissions for apps and also allows users to modify controls so that apps do not gain access to contacts or other information. But as we see, all but newer and expensive Android phones are super slow when it comes to getting updates for their OSes. Over 54 per cent of Android users are using older versions which do not have these permissions, and users need to be savvy enough to know where to find app permissions are (Settings > Apps > Gear button > App Permissions).
In conclusion, for Sarahah users concerned with privacy is that they do not need to download the service app but can use the features like sending messages, register and receiving messages on Sarahah, via a website. The site does not ask for permissions to access contacts from any of your address books.