New Delhi: Google late on Friday night admitted that it may have inadvertently coded Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) helpline numbers into smartphones and apologised for the concerns raised by smartphone users across the country.
Thousands of Android phone users complained that UIDAI's toll-free helpline numbers had been added to their phonebook memory by default. "This is no joke as it is on my phone too. I didn't save this number. Check your phone asap, feeling worried," a user tweeted with a screenshot.
In its statement though, Google has said that there is no unauthorised access into phones of such users. "Our internal review has revealed that in 2014, the then UIDAI helpline number and the 112 distress helpline number were inadvertently coded into the SetUp wizard of the Android release given to OEMs for use in India and has remained there since," a Google India tweet read. "Since the numbers get listed on a user's contact list, these get transferred accordingly to the contacts on any new device. We are sorry for any concern that this might have caused, and would like to assure everyone that this is not a situation of any unauthorised access of their Android devices. Users can manually delete the number from their devices."
— Google India (@GoogleIndia) August 3, 2018
Google's admission would come as a massive relief for not just jittery phone users but for UIDAI which has had to fight fire all of Friday and even said it had not asked any handset manufacturer to add their toll-free number. That this happened close on the heels of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Chairman R.S. Sharma's open Aadhaar challenge to critics and hackers to take out his personal information had what intensified the spotlight.
