6 Months Jail For Not Installing Aarogya Setu App; Hacker Claims Security Issues In Aarogya App

As we all know, the Government has recently developed and launched a new app to help India fight and eventually eradicate the Coronavirus disease. 

Aarogya Setu has been developed by the National Informatics Centre, a part of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of the Indian government, and has managed to cross 5 crore downloads in 13 days to become the world’s fastest growing app. 

The Government also ordered every smartphone brand in India to include the app in the smartphone by default. In fact, if you don’t have the app on your phone, you might be looking at being arrested by the Noida police. 

However, we wonder if Aarogya Setu is trustworthy or not, as the app is known to have a security issue! 

Find out all the details right here!

6 Months Jail If You Dont Have Aarogya Setu App!

The Noida Police have issued an order that demands that all the citizens should have the Aarogya Setu app installed on their phones. They have also announced that not having the Aarodya Setu app on your phone will be “violation of lockdown rules” and can be “punishable under relevant sections”.

And what’s more, the Noida Police will be carrying out a random check of phones. DCP (Law and Order) Ashutosh Dwiwedi reasons, “If smartphone users don’t have the Aarogya Setu app on their phones, it would amount to lockdown violation. Hence, it will be punishable.”

There exists a fine of Rs 1000 and/or prison of 6 months, in case of violation of lockdown rules.

Hacker Detects Security Issue In Aarogya Setu App; Government Responds Denying Claims

Creating chaos about the app is French cybersecurity expert and hacker under the alias “Elliot Alderson”, who has detected that the app has a security issue. As per the hacker, this issue will be responsible for putting the data of 90 million users at risk as the Aarogya Setu app obtains location information of the user.

This has been confirmed by the developers of the app, who said, “it is by design and is clearly mentioned in the privacy policy” of the app.

The team of the Aarogya Setu app has posted a response on Twitter, saying that, “no personal information of any users has been proven to be at risk”.

#COVID19: 'Aarogya Setu' team issues a statement on data security of the mobile application. pic.twitter.com/vD55tAadis

— ANI (@ANI) May 6, 2020

And while confirming some of the issued identified by the hacker, the team refuted the claims of the app being a security threat in any way.