A national wide advisory has been sent to all officials of the army and parliamentary forces warning them of a cyber threat. Officials have been told to ensure that no men under their control are using Truecaller, Shareit, and 40 other Chinese apps.
Intelligence agencies found that almost 42 apps including Truecaller are either spyware or malicious ware. This means that the usage of any of these 42 apps might result in a data breach. This isn’t the first time that Chinese apps are suspected for a data breach. This time it is a bit stronger since the advisory came from Indian Intelligence Agencies.
If usage of these apps is not good for the army, then it might not be for the normal people too.
This information has been received by Union Home Ministry from agencies like the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW or RAW) and National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO).
“As per reliable inputs, a number of Android/iOS apps developed by Chinese developers or having Chinese links are reportedly either spyware or other malicious ware. Use of these apps by our force personnel can be detrimental to data security having implications on the force and national security“, says the advisory.
These 42 are:
- SHAREit
- Truecaller
- UC News
- UC Browser
- BeautyPlus
- NewsDog
- VivaVideo- QU Video Inc
- Parallel Space
- APUS Browser
- Perfect Corp
- Virus Cleaner (Hi Security Lab)
- CM Browser
- Mi Community
- DU recorder
- Vault-Hide
- YouCam Makeup
- Mi Store
- CacheClear DU apps studio
- DU Battery Saver
- DU Cleaner
- DU Privacy
- 360 Security
- DU Browser
- Clean Master – Cheetah Mobile
- Baidu Translate
- Baidu Map
- Wonder Camera
- ES File Explorer
- Photo Wonder
- QQ International
- QQ Music
- QQ Mail
- QQ Player
- QQ NewsFeed
- WeSync
- QQ Security Centre
- SelfieCity
- Mail Master
- Mi Video call-Xiaomi
- and QQ Launcher.
related: Google removed UC Browser from Playstore
These apps include some famous apps like Truecaller, share it and UC Browser.
However, Truecaller is not accepting this and trying to answer its users in a convincing way. A Truecaller spokesperson, in a statement to India Today Tech said, “In response to certain reports, we would like to clarify that we are a Sweden based company. We are not sure why the app is on this list, but we’re investigating. Truecaller is not a malware, and all our features are permission-based and are disabled by default.”
Truecaller responses to Facebook comments
This shows that Truecaller hadn’t done anything wrong with their apps intentionally. Hope they fix their flaws(if any) since it is one of the most useful apps in mobile.
