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Plea says the app made users ‘vulnerable and prone to cyber threats’.
The Supreme Court on Friday asked the government to respond to a petition seeking a ban on the use of video communications app ‘Zoom’ for official and personal purposes.
A Bench led by Chief Justice of India S.A. Bobde issued notice to the Centre on the plea raising privacy concerns. The court said the government should file a reply in four weeks.
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The plea by Delhi resident Harsh Chugh said the app made users “vulnerable and prone to cyber threats.”
It has alleged that the Zoom app “practices data hoarding and cyber hoarding,” which include mass storage of personal data of its users and stores cloud recordings, instant messages and files.
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“Zoom is reported to have a bug that can be abused intentionally to leak information of users to third parties. The app has been falsely claiming that calls are end-to-end encrypted when they are not,” the petition said.
It claimed that Zoom had apologised publicly for “mistakenly routing traffic through China” where Internet is heavily monitored by the government.
The plea has alleged that Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the nodal cybersecurity agency, has also warned Zoom users of cyber risks.