Even as there is a huge outcry over user privacy in India in the wake of the big Jio data leak yesterday, a new controversy erupted on Twitter on the same topic. The controversy started with a tweet from cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar, when he asked his Twitter followers to share phone numbers in public.
The tweet from Sachin Tendulkar, came as a part of a brand promotion for IDBI life insurance – to promote fitness, as the company sponsors several marathons across the country.
“Have friends with many excuses to not get fit? Tag them using #NoExcuses with their cities & mobile no & I may call to give them a pep talk!” Tendulkar had tweeted. But later he deleted the tweet, according to a DNA report.
Following the tweet, Australian web security expert, Troy Hunt promptly took up the issue and tweeted, “How do you mine troves of phone numbers from Indians? Get a famous cricketer to politely ask people to dox their friends! #NoExcuses”
How do you mine troves of phone numbers from Indians? Get a famous cricketer to politely ask people to dox their friends! #NoExcuses https://t.co/PYPCvXdqdr
— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) July 10, 2017
“Would it be too meta if I scraped these numbers off #NoExcuses then paid an Indian call centre to phone and ask for the tweet to be deleted?” He added in his tweet.
Would it be too meta if I scraped these numbers off #NoExcuses then paid an Indian call centre to phone and ask for the tweet to be deleted? https://t.co/t2k3fDS8sO
— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) July 10, 2017
Meanwhile, Indians also took to Twitter and expressed disappointment over Sachin’s tweet. Here’s how they responded:
This is a privacy disaster. Sharing personal info here (esp mobile numbers) can get you banned. You might land in jail too.
— Kartik Dayanand (@KartikDayanand) July 10, 2017
thank goodness that Sachin didn’t ask for your credit card info. we would have given it too.
— binesh (@binesh_ks) July 10, 2017
The Jio database would come in handy to verify the information. _
— Mayank Kumar (@mayankdotnet) July 10, 2017
With over 17 million followers, Tendulkar is one the most-followed sports stars on Twitter. His tweet drew criticism as not many understand the implications of sharing their phone numbers on a public platform.
The perils of doing this are obvious — user details shared on Twitter are public forever, and can easily be scraped from a hashtag or thread, and sold on the darkweb to spammers, and identity thieves.
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