Reliance Jio has been contributing to the current Coronavirus situation with a number of solutions for the users, with one of them being the COVID-19 symptoms checker functionality for users to know whether or not they can catch the virus. However, this functionality has a security flaw that exposed users' data online. Read on to know what happened.
Jio Coronavirus symptoms checker exposed users data
According to a report by TechCrunch, Jio's Coronavirus symptoms checker tool faced a security lapse in one of its key databases due to which millions of user data was left exposed on the internet. The news came to light via the security researcher Anurag Sen who contacted TechCrunch for the same.
The leaked database had millions of users who had taken the Coronavirus symptoms checker test. The data included information on who took the test, users' browser and OS information, and answers to the questions in the test. In some cases, users' exact location information was also exposed. This included places such as Mumbai and Pune in India and even user location data from the UK and North America. In addition to this, the database had a log of website errors and other system messages.
TechCrunch contacted Reliance Jio of the data breach and the database was taken down soon after. Jio spokesperson Tushar Pania, in a statement, said, "We have taken immediate action. he logging server was for monitoring performance of our website, intended for the limited purpose of people doing a self-check to see if they have any COVID-19 symptoms."
However, there is no word on whether or not the exposed data was accessed by anybody.
For those who don't know, Jio introduced the Coronavirus symptoms checker within its MyJio app in March. The tool requires users to answer a couple of questions and figure out whether or not they have COVID-19 symptoms to finally consult a doctor for the same.
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