Bombay HC seeks Govt's response to PIL claiming Truecaller leaks user data to partners

The Bombay High Court on Wednesday issued notices to the Centre and Maharashtra government, seeking their response to a public interest litigation (PIL) claiming that Truecaller mobile application has been sharing personal data of users, in a breach of legal norms of the country.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice GS Kulkarni was hearing the petition filed by one Shashank Posture. The petitioner claimed that Truecaller app collects data of all users, shares it with some of its partners without the consent of users, and dumps the liability on the user.

"This is a manipulative set up because the user has no choice. The app also registers users for a Unified Payments Interface service without their consent, or without due process," Posture alleged.

'Google, Airtel, ICICI benfit from data leak'

When the court asked which partners were benefitting from Truecaller, the petitioner named Google India, Bharati Airtel, ICICI Bank and several loan providing companies who were among the beneficaries of such data leaks by the application.

Posture has impleaded the Union government, the Maharashtra government, the state IT department, Truecaller international LLP, ICICI Bank, and the National Payment Corporation as respondent parties in the case.

He alleged that government authorities approved Truecaller app "without proper checks and in contravention of the information security practices rules." The High Court said this it was fit to issue notices in the case.

"The case of the petitioner is that Truecaller through its mobile application has indulged in an absolute breach of data privacy of citizens. He submits that such breach is contrary to data protection laws," the court said. "We have heard the petitioner for some time and we are of the opinion that a notice is required to be issued to respondents," it said, directing the respondent parties to reply to the notice within three weeks.

(With inputs from agency)