Hyderabad: Twitter has become a battleground for an anonymous hackers group and the supporters of Reliance Industries on Thursday after the former accused Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio of compromising the privacy and security of prospective customers through its unencrypted chat service. According to the hackers group, Anonymous India, Reliance Jio’s flagship app does not encrypt the personal data of its users, making them easy targets for surveillance.
Reliance Jio, however, denied these allegations.Recently, Anonymous India had shot into the limelight after it brought down Trai’s website for making public the contact details of people who have supported net neutrality. Apart from this, the hackers group claims that Jio app is hosted from Chinese servers, which allows the Chinese government to access data from the unencrypted messages that Indians send each other through this application.
“The Jio Chat uses a Chinese mapping service Amap, which is not encrypted, and would allow the Chinese to track your whereabouts in India,” the hackers said in a series of tweets. According to News Laundry, Reliance Jio spokesperson claimed that Jio Chat app encrypts all the messages and its servers are located in India and owned by Reliance. On the use of Chinese mapping service, Jio reportedly said that “since the app is planned as a global app and China does not support Google Maps, it includes use of Chinese map service only when the user is in China. In rest of the world it uses Google’s map service.”
The supporters of Reliance Industries, however, sought the integrity of the hackers group by questioning their financiers. “One question for you, dear @opindia_revenge: would you care to disclose who you are and who finances your operations?” asked an RIL supporter. Recently, Bharti Airtel was accused of injecting java script into users’ browsing session to track their preferences, compromising their privacy.
