Hyderabad: While travel site RedBus uses a bot to send ticket details via Whatsapp, its feature to create a group of passengers travelling together is raising security and privacy concerns.
Using the WhatsApp business API, RedBus sends a message to the client who has booked a seat on the bus to join a group using a link. At the end of the message, it mentions that “Your phone number can be seen by others in the group.”
There is concern over sharing phone numbers in a group of unknown people. Twitter user Nadika raised a concern about sharing numbers for taxi rides with random strangers. She said, “More importantly, why would I want my number and details known to people I have never met before and will never again on a bus journey that may last maximum 6 hours (sic)?”
Mr Balaji Balagurusami tweeted: “The co-passenger app we can chat, share books, ask for medicine, water or stalk and spam them make the awesome idea into nightmare.” Others suggested to hide privacy settings on WhatsApp.
Experts have raised privacy concerns about RedBus acquiring metadata of passengers. P. Srikanth said, “Being an opt-in does not mean it does not violate privacy. It gets rich metadata of all those who travelled on those buses.”
RedBus, while admitting the limitations, claims that the group chat feature has been added so that co-passengers can help each other ease some of their travel worries. RedBus said, “We want to ensure that RedBus customers have a delightful journey and this feature is also aimed towards that. Please note that joining a WhatsApp group is optional and customers join by themselves on clicking of invite link sent by RedBus. We do not add any customer to the group without his or her consent.”
