Hacker group Anonymous India has said of that the chat app Jio is allegedly sending data to a Chinese server. The group accused Reliance Jio of violating the rules by sending the users data to a Chinese IP. The group in their Twitter account @AnonOpsIndia handle, tweeted that, "Over 500k mobile data taken by China made Reliance Jio app. Hosting by Chinese too."

The company said, "All Jio Chat data and associated servers are hosted physically in Reliance Jio data centres in India. No data travels outside of India from Jio Chat servers." "The analysis published is by an inexperienced novice who either does not understand the APK coding or has deliberately tried to sensationalise the issue by conveniently highlighting irrelevant portions of the APK script," they added.

It said, "This is not executable code, meaning these references are not used by the application while running. Proper and complete examination of the code would show that the app does not transfer data to any servers outside of India."

"We took apart Reliance Jio app and found that they are using Chinese geolocation mapping service. It shows that Reliance is using a geolocation which is China-based service," said AnonOpsIndia. "There is no encryption between the person using Jio chat app and the Chinese company map. Hence, it makes it lot easier for the Chinese hackers to snoop over your data," AnonOpsIndia tweeted.

"This is a common practice for any app wishing to provide location-based services within China. However, when used globally, Jio Chat (outside of China) always uses Google Maps. (This can be checked by anyone by using Jio Chat Location Sharing function)," RJIL said. "Proper and complete examination of the code would show that the app does not transfer data to any servers outside of India," RJIL said.

AnonOpsIndia said, "It's plain http request being made. Anyone can snoop at the data being transmitted. Your ISP, gov(ernment), hackers etc, anyone can! Now why we claim this is an app Made in China but for Indian users." "Why would Indian engineers write debug ligs in Chinese?, they asked."

"Occasionally these developers use their native language while writing comments within the APK to better understand the problem. We are committed to having the best talent working on our products, regardless of race, nationality, gender or native tongue. India embraces diversity and as a company, we do too," RJIL said.

By Premji