Many of you and your friends might be using UC browser in the phone as it provides good speed along with other benefits to the internet users. But, there’s a reason to worry for you.
The company and its browser has come under the government radar for allegedly leaking the Indian user data to its China servers. It is being said that if the company is found guilty, the browser will be get banned in India.
An officer told PTI on the condition of Anonymity-
“There have been complaints against UC Browser that it sends mobile data of its users in India to server in China. There are complaints that even if an user has uninstalled it or cleaned browsing data, the browser retains control of DNS of user’s device.”
The ministry of electronics and IT is actively looking at findings of the University of Toronto which has allegedly discovered “several major privacy and security vulnerabilities that would seriously expose users of UC Browser to surveillance and other privacy violations”.
On the other side, Alibaba’s UC Web, which owns UC Browser said that they have not received any notice or intimation from the government regarding the enquiry.
Talking about the data leak, the China based company stated-
“At UC Web, we take security and privacy very seriously and work hard to comply with local regulations of each region we operate in. It is common practice for IT companies to place servers all around the globe to provide better service to its users. We have strong measures in place to encrypt the data while we transmit it.”
The company also stated that it is a standard industry practice to collect user information and data in necessary scenarios to provide users with localised services after taking necessary authorization from users to collect the required data.
They further said-
“Our systems are protected by an end-user licensing agreement which protects the interest of our users…We will not do anything to breach the trust of our users.”
As per UC’s reports last year, the company has more than 100 million active users in India and Indonesia.
As per the Stat-Counter report at the end of July 2017, UC Browser is the second most used web browser in India after Google’s Chrome with 39.62% per cent market share.
Let us know if you are reading this story from UC Browser or not 🙂
