As the disagreements between Twitter and the Indian government took many turns, to eventually end with a meeting with MeitY to arrive at some common ground, several users have been looking at Twitter-alternatives. Koo app has emerged as a popular choice for government agencies, officials and others. But skeptics questioned the security of the popular Made-in-India app and suspected lax security.
The claim
Several users speculated that the Koo app had a poor security firewall, easy to breach, hence putting millions of user data at risk. More than 3 million people have downloaded the app on Play Store, so the question of lax security is going to raise many eyebrows.
A French cyber expert who goes by Elliot Alderson on Twitter shared few screenshots and claimed that Koo's security loophole can be misused to retrieve personal information such as email ID, data of birth, name, marital status, gender and more.
The cyber expert reacted to Koo co-founder and CEO Aprameya R's defense, saying the data unearthed was available to the public regardless. This conversation raised questions and concerns about Koo's privacy.
Fact check
International Business Times reviewed the claim about Koo being unsafe for users. While our independent research on firewall security is underway, the available resources show there's no reason to panic. The information Koo app seeks from users at the time of registration can be skipped and users can sign up with just their phone number.
As for Alderson's claim that Koo app has a security loophole and showed it using a few screenshots, another Twitter user did some research and found no such security loophole is present in Koo app.
"Is Koo App leaking Personal user data at all? No! The JSON db shows the exact thing which the user has permitted for the public view. It wasn't a hack or vulnerability at all," Twitter user @abhas_rewcie writes.
Here's detailed independent research done by the Twitter user to debunk any claims about Koo leaking personal information. Find all the information shared by the user below:
Based on the evidence gathered so far, International Business Times arrives at the conclusion that there is no concrete evidence to support the fact about Koo leaking personal information of its users. The information users choose to display on their Koo profile is publicly available.
