With many Indians joining the #VocalForLocal pledge and boycotting Chinese products and apps, one app dubbed Mitron got instant success as a replacement for Bytedance¡¯s TikTok.?
This allegedly made-in-India app also was downloaded by over 50 lakh users within just one month of its launch.
However, now this TikTok rival app has been suspended from the Google Play Store, on the grounds of violating its ¡®spam and minimum functionality¡¯ policy,?
The app was the talk of the town recently. However, this bubble was soon busted by a team of developers from Pakistan called QBoxus that revealed that it was actually developed by them (and initially named TicTic) but later was sold on CodeCanyon for $34 or roughly Rs 2,500.?
This was further confirmed by Irfan Sheikh -- one of the members of QBoxus in a conversation with GadgetsNow. He also revealed the name of the buyer to be ¡®Shivank Agarwal¡¯. Shivank and the team at Mitron didn¡¯t respond to any questions surrounding their rapid success.
What was more concerning, however, was the fact that the app didn¡¯t really have any privacy policy in place. Neither did the app developers showed any sort of accountability whatsoever for the way data was being collected and stored.?
While the original Mitron remains suspended, several opportunistic developers have jumped on the bandwagon of making Mitron clones on the Google Play Store, going to such an extent to mimic the Mitron app by going with the prominent M logo identical to the real app, trying to confuse innocent users into using the same.?
Whether you should be using Mitron app on your phone is another conversation altogether, because of speculation around its data security and privacy practices.
New Delhi based security researcher Karan Saini who analysed the app¡¯s content said in a statement to GadgetsNow, ¡°It is generally not advisable to give your data, including name, contact information, photos and videos to this app, not because of the prospect of potential security vulnerabilities existing in it, but because, given that it seems to be operated by one sole individual, there would be no accountability even if customer data was misused.¡±
He added, ¡°Although I did find one security flaw in very rudimentary testing. I can add and remove followers from any account. This flaw exists in the original TicTic app also.¡±
It goes without saying that in case you have Mitron installed, you should uninstall it, at least till it doesn¡¯t come back up on the Play Store.?