The Indian National Congress today deleted its WithINC Android application from the Google Play Store after the app landed in the centre of a data mismanagement controversy.

The Congress said it decided to remove the application from the Play Store since "people were being misled" by a French vigilante alleging that the app insecurely transmitted user data.

The allegations - made by a hacker who goes by the name of Elliot Alderson - were strongly denied by the Congress.

However, the party admitted that it had taken WithINC down from the Google Play Store as "people were being misled" and incorrect information was being circulated following Alderson's allegations.

Alderson had claimed that the Congress app insecurely transmitted user information to a website with the URL 'membership.inc.in'.

The Congress, through a series of tweets, hit back at Alderson's charges and clarified saying that WithINC was a membership app that had "not been in use for over 5 months".

The URL mentioned by Alderson (http://membership.inc.in) "is the defunct URL from the app", the Congress also said. "WithINC app was being used for Social Media updates alone since transitioning the membership to the website. This morning we were forced to remove the app from the Playstore as the wrong URL was being circulated & people were being misled."

The WithINC app is a membership app & has not been in use for over 5 months since we moved membership to https://t.co/HkouqDJ8hN from 16th Nov 2017.

The URL (https://t.co/s6EcGp0Oet) quoted by the media is the defunct URL from the app. The actual membership URL can be seen below pic.twitter.com/bXFXBEdcUg March 26, 2018

Alderson, it must be noted, had warned last evening that he would be coming out with damning evidence against the Congress's Android app.

"I found something interesting on the With INC #android app, details will be published tomorrow," Alderson had tweeted yesterday.

USER DATA SENT TO SINGAPORE, SAYS HACKER

Today morning, Alderson followed through on his promise. In a series of tweets, the French cyber security researcher claimed the Congress's Android app insecurely transmits user information to the party's website.

The app, Alderson said, used the relatively insecure 'http' protocol to transmit user information instead of the encrypted 'https' protocol.

Alderson also claimed that the internet protocol (IP) address of 'membership.inc.in', the website to which the Congress's Android app allegedly connected to, was located in Singapore.

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The Congress denied both these allegations, with the party's social media in-charge Divya Spandana (also known as Ramya) saying, "We don't collect any personal data through the INC app. We discontinued it a long time ago. It was being used only for social media updates. We collect data for membership and this is through our website http://www.INC.in, this is encrypted."

Clarification: We dont drive membership through the app, its done through our website https://t.co/eVPYDG34Yf

Servers for these are based in Mumbai.

As you may have noticed, the link on the app is broken. https://t.co/Y57aAxhcjh Divya Spandana/Ramya (@divyaspandana) March 26, 2018

Spandana also indicated that the app Alderson was talking about in his tweets was not the actual Indian National Congress app. "As you may have noticed, the link on the app is broken," she said without clarifying further.

The controversy over Congress's Android applications comes as the Grand Old Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party traded charges over how seriously they took user data protection.

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Recently, PM Narendra Modi's NaMo application was in the centre of controversy after Alderson claimed that the app sent user data to a third party without consent. There have also been news reports of the NaMo app asking users for a number of permissions.

The reports prompted Congress president Rahul Gandhi to launch an Orwellian attack targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Gandhi, in his second similar charge at PM Modi, said on Twitter that the prime minister was the "Big Boss who likes to spy on Indians," referring to the TV show inspired by the 'Big Brother' of George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984.

(This story has been updated to include Congress's statement on the removal of the WithINC app from the Google Play Store)

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