New Delhi: The app row doesn’t seems to be ending. The political atmosphere is soon turning into app-political one. All now being discussed is about digital politics. Yes, After realistic scandals and frauds, now the weather is changing to virtual frauds by stealing data using personal data without proper legal consent. But many people who are illiterate of these technologies may not understand what is going around with our politicians talking about apps. Very few may understand the gravity of the situation. Commonly, it can be termed as ‘privacy theft’.
After Prime Minister’s NaMo App controversy of stealing data without user consent, the news was all about BJP accusing Congress App, available on Google Play Store. And now, after they pulled down their apps, another app story is surfacing.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s app is not available for download from the google play store after a person on Twitter alleged that it was selling all personal data of the users to a private company. Amid a recently surfaced massive data breach scandal, the Congress had pulled down its app earlier saying the app was connecting to a “membership” site that was “dysfunctional” and being wrongly circulated.
The Siddaramaiah app was run by the Karnataka state government and promised to connect the chief minister to the common man.
After clicking the links given in the Google search, a message reads, “This content is not available in your country yet. We’re working to bring the content you love to more countries as quickly as possible. Please check back again soon.”
French security researcher Baptiste Robert, who is also known by his Twitter username Elliot Alderson, alleged that the name, phone number, date of birth, gender of a user is sent to a private company.
“1/ People asked me if this tweet is true or not. Let’s talk about this app,” Alderson tweeted.
“2/ Every time, I open the app I have this pop up: “Internet speed is too slow”. As a consequence, I was unable to make a dynamic analysis and so confirm the tweet above,” he said.
On March 26, the Congress party pulled their app ‘With INC’ off the Google Store. A cursory search for the app on Apple App Store also failed to bring up some results. The Congress out rightly denied collecting any personal data through the INC app and said it had been defunct for some time.
Recently, a political row has erupted due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which involves the mining of personal data of Facebook users without their legal consent, by the research group to help political parties. Over the past few days, a whistleblower has revealed all the details of Cambridge Analytica’s work in India with multiple parties. He also named the Congress party of India as a client of the firm before a UK parliamentary committee.
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