Researcher alleges Indian leader’s app ships data abroad

LONDON – Allegations that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official smartphone app is shipping Indians’ personal data to servers abroad have degenerated into a sarcastic back-and-forth online.

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi mocked the prime minister after a researcher said Modi’s app, which has been downloaded 5 million times on Google’s Play Store, is pumping private information to servers controlled by an American company.

Modi’s party has defended the app, saying the harvested data is being used “only for analytics.” Meanwhile the app’s makers have quietly rewritten its privacy policy.

The researcher, whose “Elliot Alderson” pseudonym is borrowed from the hacker drama “Mr. Robot,” did not immediately return messages.

Alderson has spent weeks needling Indian officials over security vulnerabilities in the country’s national biometric database, often drawing defensive responses from authorities.