Twitter rival Koo woos Indian users amid data leak row

New Delhi, Feb 11 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.

"Some news about data leaking being spoken about unnecessarily. Please read this: The data visible is something that the user has voluntarily shown on their profile of Koo. It cannot be termed a data leak. If you visit a user profile you can see it anyway," Radhakrishna said in a tweet.

Alderson, who has earlier alleged flaws in the Aadhaar platform and Aarogya Setu app, quickly reacted, saying, "Update: Koo founder commented the leak. It's a lie. I did check this point before tweeting and it was not true."

Another controversy that has hit the platform is the issue of investment from China as the platform pitches itself as an "AatmaNirbhar

 

( With inputs from IANS )