NEW DELHI: Amid persistent privacy concerns raised against Aarogya Setu app--a digital tool to contact trace people who have got exposed to infected people, the Centre on Monday sought to allay the fears saying that it is the 'safest app ever.'
In a briefing on COVID-19 status in country, the government also said that the data of less than 13,000 people--of about 9.8 crore people who have downloaded the app--who are infected and have the app, has been moved to government servers.
Ajay Prakash Sawhney, secretary, Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, who also heads a COVID-19 related empowered group on technology and data management, said that data of even COVID-19 patients will be deleted from the servers 60 days after they have recovered.
Using the app, nearly 1.3 lakh users who came into close contact with these 13,000 persons were alerted.
He explained that the app’s privacy policy states when two users come in close contact, their unique ids are stored on the two phones along with the time and GPS location.
This is uploaded to the app’s servers -controlled by the government- only if a user tests positive.
Sawhney said that when the two Aarogya Setu users come close to each other, the app transfers data like GPS location, identity etc. to central servers if a person tests positive for the disease.
For those who are not at risk, their data is deleted every 30 days and data for those who are being tested right now is deleted after 45 days. If a user tests positive, then their data is kept up to 60 days after they are cured.
Based on the privacy policy, this covers data about self-assessments, exposure events and location coordinates.
The IT secretary also reiterated that the data acquired from the app is used only for health-related purposes and will not be used for any surveillance purpose.
The assurance by the government comes days after ethical hacker Robert Baptiste, wrote an article detailing some ways in which an attacker could take advantage of the app.
However, the government responded to Baptiste’s claims insisting that the assumptions are not true and data stored in the app is safe.