India’s ruling and main opposition parties yesterday accused each other of using social media dirty tricks to mine and share followers’ personal data.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress Party of Rahul Gandhi have seized upon the data breach storm surrounding Facebook and other media to score political points against one another.
Gandhi accused Modi of using his official app “to build a personal database on millions of Indians”.
“He’s the Big Boss who likes to spy on Indians,” Gandhi tweeted, referring to India’s version of the “Big Brother” TV show.
But the Congress president did not comment on allegations that his own party had taken down a membership website and mobile app because of security flaws and allegations that it too was sharing people’s personal data.
The row erupted this weekend after a French security researcher, who tweets as Elliot Alderson, flagged flaws with Modi’s personal NaMo app.
Modi is the most popular politician on Indian social media.
His app has been downloaded more than 5mn times, and his Twitter account has 41.4mn followers.
Alderson alleged that whenever a user created a profile on Modi’s Android app, it shared their personal data without their consent.
“The issue with this app is that they send the personal data of their user to a third party company without their consent,” Alderson said in Twitter messages.
Congress and the BJP seized upon Alderson’s allegations to attack each other.
In response to Gandhi’s attack on the Modi app, the head of BJP’s IT department turned fire on the Congress Party’s former mobile platform.
“Congress deleted its own app from the App store after they were called out. What is the Congress Party hiding,” said Amit Malviya on Twitter.
Congress denied the BJP charge, saying that its membership site had been “defunct for a while now.”
Both parties last week exchanged charges of links with Cambridge Analytica, the firm accused of misusing information on millions of Facebook followers.
The BJP also called Gandhi “technologically illiterate.”
BJP spokesman Sambit Patra accused him of spreading lies.
“This is a classic case of technological illiteracy of Rahul Gandhi. Technologically he is very backward. Analytics is not equivalent to spying or snooping. Those technologically ignorant are trying to describe it as snooping and spying,”he said.
Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani also took a swipe at Gandhi, asking him if his team had misunderstood his demand to get “NaMo” app deleted and instead removed “WithINC” from the Google store.
She also asked the Congress chief if he would care to answer “why Congress sends data to Singapore servers which can be accessed by any Tom, Dick and Analytica.”
Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who also addressed a press conference, said that the allegations of Congress collecting data through its app were the “half truth”.
“As is usual with the BJP, they did not tell you that the ‘WithINC’ app had only 15,000 downloads. It had become defunct because our people do not like the ‘missed call’ membership. Congressmen believe in physical or offline membership. In contrast the Narendra Modi app has had 50 lakh downloads,” he said.