Mumbai: Pushing back against the steady hum of privacy concerns from critics of India’s Aarogya Setu contact tracing app, MyGov CEO Abhishek Singh emphatically defended the app as the safest across all mobile apps that Indians currently use and a digital public good that Indians should be proud of.
MyGov developed the Aarogya app and launched it in April. There is no other app that anyone in India is using today that has greater privacy features than what Aarogya Setu has, he said. Critics will be there, we welcome them. Sometimes what they say makes us strive harder and ensure(s) that what we do is in the best interests of the people of India.
Baptiste Robert, a French security researcher, in a 6 May post under his online pseudonym Elliot Alderman, said he was able to spoof his location and zoom in on the location of infected users. MyGov responded to Robert’s security concerns and cranked up its communication around privacy FAQs and the small details.
Abhishek’s remarks come on a day when the app at the heart of India’s contact tracing effort has been downloaded 107 million times in a country with a smartphone user base of about 500 million.