Twitter rival Koo woos Indian users amid data leak row

Homegrown, vernacular microblogging platform Koo, which has emerged as a favourite among a section of users who want to quit Twitter, has found itself in the midst of several controversies including a data leak row and Chinese investment.

These issues have emerged at a time when the platform is trying to keep its systems up in the face of a sudden influx of users, including several cabinet ministers and various ministries in the wake of the ongoing Twitter-government war of words.

The issue of data leak row rocked the platform after a French security researcher who goes by the name Elliot Alderson on Thursday claimed that the platform was leaking user data like date of birth, marital status, etc.

“You asked so I did it. I spent 30 min on this new Koo app. The app is leaking of the personal data of his users: email, dob, name, marital status, gender,” said Alderson as he also posted a screen shot of a user data. Koo Co-founder and CEO Aprameya Radhakrishna denied that there was any data leak.

Koo earlier this month announced that it has raised $4.1 million as part of its Series A funding.

Koo currently has about 3 million users and traffic to the platform rose as much as by 30 times on Wednesday, according to a source who is familiar with the matter.

User base of the platform, according to the source, has also increased dramatically over the past two days.

The growth comes amid a controversy surrounding Twitter which refused to fully comply with the government’s order for blocking some tweets and Twitter accounts, citing the right to freedom of expression.