Reliance Jio COVID-19 Symptom Checker Tool Found to Have Major Security Lapse

Reliance Jio has been actively participating in helping people get out of the global pandemic crisis. It is doing its bit by providing excellent data services at cheap rates, and its parent company Reliance Industries Limited has been doing quite a bit of charity work as well. Governments all over the world have been putting resources in developing apps which will be able to help people track symptoms of COVID-19 and be able to identify if they have it or not. Indian Government also developed on such an app called – ‘Aarogya Setu

’. Reliance Jio also launched an app for checking symptoms for COVID-19. It can be used to check symptoms for your entire family. But it has been found that there is a security lapse with the app and allows others to go through a users database on the internet without any password. The news, first reported by TechCrunch, is based on the findings by security researcher Anurag Sen.

Reliance Jio has Pulled the System Offline For Now

As soon as this news reached Reliance Jio, the company pulled the app offline. There is no records or data for knowing if someone else has already been able to access the data. A Jio spokesperson said that the company had taken immediate action. He said that the logging server was to monitor the performance of the website and was only intended for a limited purpose of people checking their symptoms and ensure that they have/don’t have COVID-19.

“We have taken immediate action. The 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,” said a Jio spokesperson to TechCrunch.

Unsheltered Data in The Internet

When a sample of data was taken to identify the kind of information that has been exposed on the internet, it was found that a user’s precise location can be seen as well. The data includes the name and profile of everyone who logged in to do a symptom check. Each of the answers users gave to different questions are also exposed in the data logs. With this, a user’s exact browsing app can be identified as well, which can be further used to track all the user’s online activities. Through data samples, it was found that most of the people who were using the platform to check their symptoms are from cities like Pune and Mumbai.