AAROGYA SETU APP, IS IT SAFE TO USE IT? by Bhavya Bathla

The newly launched “Aarogya setu ” app on 2nd April 2020 developed by National Informatics Center(NIC) was made to keep track of COVID-19 in India, as well as to safeguard the citizens due to the shortage medical facilities and increasing of COVID-19 patients.

Aarogya setu is a contact tracing app that traces the location through Bluetooth and GPS and alerts the person whether anyone is in contact with any COVID-19 positive patient as well as it also tells how many people are infected in the locality through its contact tracing feature.

Contact tracing simply means, tracing the location of every person who has installed this app and to tell whether you are safe in your locality or wherever you are going.

Aarogya Setu works by asking a few questions regarding your health issues as per the guidelines of the Indian Council for Medical Research(ICMR) and tells the risk level based on the answers you provide to the app.

At the time of downloading this app, the app takes a few information regarding the person who has installed the app such as age, gender, phone no. , location and the traveled record if the person has been traveled in any foreign country for the last 30 days, moreover it also ask to enable location and Bluetooth for tracing feature to be enabled.

It also provides a virtual id given by the app to provide anonymity to the user and all these data are being transferred to NIC which stores this data for 45 days and 60 days of a corona positive patient after that new data is stored.

Prime minister also requested to download this app by every citizen of India,which would help the government as well as the citizens of to India to be a safeguard from COVID-19, moreover, this contact tracing will only work properly.

when half of the Indian population will download and use it properly, not only this on 2nd May 2020 government made mandatory to download this app by every citizen and also requested all government authorities as well as private organizations to check whether their employees have downloaded the aarogya setu app or not.

Now its compulsory for everyone to download this app and to use it properly to be with the government in the fight of the COVID19 virus.

BIG DRAWBACK OF AAROGYA SETU APP

So as we know the Aarogya setu app is now mandatory for everyone to be downloaded in their smartphone, moreover, the people living in Noida and Greater Noida are like to fined of (rs 1000) or (6 months jail) if any person found not downloaded this app in their smartphone.

But the main question arises the person who is not able to buy a smartphone due to financial condition or the people who are using smartphones which list under(rs 1000) as on those phones this app will not be install, and as we all know increasing the pressure of government to download this app,so now how a poor person with low financial efficiency will purchase a smartphone for this aarogya setu app, as in some places in medical facilities also this app is necessary, as like example if anyone wants to purchase the medicine then this app is necessary so thinking about them how will they get the medical facilities without aarogya setu app, as its a very big problem as in India where most of the unemployed people are there poverty ratio is also high and most of the people are illiterate, so it would be a very difficult question for the government as to how they would deal with the people who are not financially good to purchase a smartphone for downloading this aarogya setu app.

CAN GOVERNMENT FORCE TO DOWNLOAD THE APP?

Yes, the answer of this question was given by “The Ministry of Home Affairs which mandates the use of Aarogya setu app under Disaster Management act sec6(2) moreover Section 35 grant the National disaster management Authority and central government to lay policies and can take measures necessary for managing the disaster.

The power to make it compulsory to download this app is like Sec 144Crpc for internet shutdown orders.

PRIVACY ISSUES RELATED TO AAROGYA SETU APP

Talking about the privacy issues regarding this app, as the government says the data is fully secured and no privacy error is there in the app at the launching, but if say an unhackable app- it can’t be true as the app which was made in just at a time of just 2 weeks with no privacy error, this was proved wrong by an ethical hacker “Elliot Alderson” who just hacked this app also helped the Indian government regarding the privacy of 90 million Indian citizens, as this app is being updated by the government day by day from the launching of the day till now, but this privacy issue told by the ethical hacker on 6th may help the government to resolve the privacy issue.

Hacker “Elliot Alderson,” told the Indian government to talk to him in private if they want to resolve this error, so after this when Indian government resolve this issue and then they posted a thank for that hacker as well they also told that they are upgrading their systems day by day and also assures for no data breach.

The programmer also entered the app without giving access to Bluetooth or GPS with his tools and in just 4 hrs he was able to download the app and he was told safe by the app through it without giving any information.

So talking about this it depends on how a person uses the application as the application is just made for the safety of citizens of India only so by giving wrong information or by doing something else to be told safe by this app will not get anyone anything as the privacy concern is resolved by the government and the government is doing a very good initiative through this app with the fight of COVID19 and the system of the app is being upgraded day by day so there is a possibility that after some time there would be no issue related to the aarogya setu app, so as per by safety of everyone, all the citizen of India should get download this app.