Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been accused of spying on his citizens through his office’s official smartphone app.
A security researcher, tweeting under the pseudonym Eliott Alderson, has said Indians personal data was sent to a third party’s server in the US without prior permission and the claim has drawn the ire of the main opposition Congress Party.
Mr Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has denied the allegations and said in a tweet that the data was merely being used to provide users with the most contextual content.
Mr Alderson, whose name is an homage to the television drama Mr Robot, posted a series of tweets over the weekend with screenshots of code that supposedly detail the data privacy breach of the app, which has been downloaded by at least 5m Android users.
Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Congress Party, mocked Mr Modi in a tweet, writing: Hi! My name is Narendra Modi. I am India’s Prime Minister. When you sign up for my official App, I give all your data to my friends in American companies.