New Delhi, May 22: The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Centre on a PIL seeking a direction to the Centre to ban ‘Zoom’ app for both government and private use in view of security and privacy concerns.
“You see this petition and file a reply,” a Bench headed by Chief Justice SA Bobde told the government counsel.
The Bench asked the Centre to file its response in four weeks.
Widely being used for video-conferencing, Zoom app practised data hoarding and cyber hoarding” which included mass storage of personal data of its users and stores cloud recordings, instant messages and files, petitioner Harsh Chugh alleged.
Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) — India’s nodal cyber security agency — too had warned about cyber risks involved in using Zoom and many organisations across the world had already banned it, he submitted.
“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,” Chugh said in his petition.
The petitioner demanded that it should be banned in India as well until an appropriate law was put in place.
Continued use of Zoom was “making the users vulnerable and prone to cyber threats”, Chugh said seeking a direction to the Centre to carry out an exhaustive technical study into the security and privacy risks involved.
The controversial app posed a security threat and could lead in increase in cyber crimes in India, he said.
Noting that COVID-19 pandemic drastically reshaped the way in which consumers, businesses and schools communicated, Chugh said that instead of lending a helping hand to people in need, Zoom violated the privacy of its millions of users by misusing and exploiting their personal information.
