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'Truly Atmanirbhar' Koo App, Indian Alternative To Twitter, Has Chinese Investor Who Is Exiting
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India, 11 Feb 2021 5:37 AM GMT
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In addition to its Chinese links, a French security researcher has alleged that Koo is not safe, and is leaking sensitive user information including email ID, phone numbers and date of birth.
Amid an ongoing standoff with social media giant Twitter, India launched its own micro-blogging app 'Koo'. The home-grown alternative of Twitter now has witnessed over 1 lakh downloads in the last 48 hours and has expanded its user base to around 3 million users.
The co-founder and CEO of Koo Aprameya Radhakrishna said that they continue to see an unprecedented spike in new users. Koo was one of the winners in the social category of the 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge', reported India Today.
Founded in March 2020, the app that has gained momentum recently has also attracted massive scrutiny.
The indigenous 'truly Atmanirbhar app' has a Chinese investor Shunwei Capital on board who is expected to exit the company soon, Aprameya Radhakrishna, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Koo said.
"Shunwei had invested in the earlier brand Vokal. We have pivoted our business and focused on Koo, they are on their way out. They are being bought out by other people. We are a truly Atmanirbhar Bharat app," Radhakrishna said.
"Shunwei Capital is a very small stakeholder in the company right now which will get bought out. They are in the process of exiting," he added.
Interestingly, Radhakrishna also took to Twitter to confirm that Koo is an India registered company with Indian founders.
"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," he tweeted.
In addition to its Chinese links, a French security researcher, Robert Baptiste, popularly known as Elliott Anderson on Twitter, has alleged that Koo is not safe, and is leaking sensitive user information including email ID, phone numbers and date of birth.
The researcher who made headlines after pointing vulnerabilities in the Aadhaar system has referred to Koo as a 'leaky app'.
"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," he tweeted.
Responding to the tweet, several other users also raised similar concerns. "It's storing user tokens as frontend global variables if you know the token info of a user. go to /create you can directly put values in here, with inspecting mode which I think will enable the compose button and you can remotely tweet to that account with the token info," another user wrote on Twitter.
Also Read: Twitter Blocks Hundreds Of Accounts Under Govt Pressure, Vows To Protect Free Speech
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