Twitter alternative Koo App is leaking user data confirms French Hacker; CEO Responds

The Koo app has recently gained momentum as many Government officials, including Union Minister Piyush Goyal, have made the shift to Koo. Winner of the Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge, the Koo app, is available in 11 Indian languages. Similar to Twitter, it helps celebrities and others interact with local communities. With the boost, comes criticism. Thus, in a recent update, French Hacker, Elliot Alderson (aka Robert Baptiste) has accused the app of exposing its users' personal data.

In a series of tweet, Baptiste said that on the request of some Twitter users, he spent 30 minutes on Koo. He found that the platform exposed sensitive information like email addresses, names, gender and marital status of users. The tweets also suggest that the platform had a domain registered, three years ago, in the US with the registrant based in China.

You asked so I did it. I spent 30 min on this new Koo app. The app is leaking of the personal data of his users: email, dob, name, marital status, gender, ... https://t.co/87Et18MrOg pic.twitter.com/qzrXeFBW0L

— Elliot Alderson (@fs0c131y) February 10, 2021

Comment from the Founder

Aprameya Radhakrishna, the Co-Founder and CEO (and developer of the app) states that this is not a data leak. He said that the data visible is something that the user has voluntarily shown on their profile of Koo. It cannot be termed a data leak. If you visit a user profile you can see it anyway.

Some news about data leaking being spoken about unnecessarily. Please read this:

The data visible is something that the user has voluntarily shown on their profile of Koo. It cannot be termed a data leak. If you visit a user profile you can see it anyway

— Aprameya R (@aprameya) February 11, 2021

The founder has also busted the claims of Chinese Origin of the company. When a Twitter user commented that the app is Chinese, Aprameya, shared a screenshot from the website whois that shows details about a website. In the screenshot, we can see that the IP location of the app is Maharashtra.

pic.twitter.com/K4ETr0r2AN

— Aprameya R (@aprameya) February 11, 2021

Further, in a tweet, he confirmed that they do have a Chinese investor on board. He also said that the investor held a single-digit percentage in Vokal (his previous venture) and that they will be exiting fully soon. Besides the Chinese investor, 3one4 Capital, Kalaari Capital and Blume Ventures are its major investors. It has raised around $4.1 million so far.

Koo is an India registered company with Indian founders. Raised earlier capital 2.5 years ago. Latest funds for Bombinate Technologies is led by a truly Indian investor 3one4 capital. Shunwei (single digit shareholder) which had invested in our Vokal journey will be exiting fully

— Aprameya R (@aprameya) February 10, 2021

From Whois

A simple whois search shows that the registrant address of the Koo app is Karnataka.