India's answer to Twitter, Koo app alleged to have a Chinese investor

The microblogging site Koo, endorsed by the Union Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology and several other right-wing personalities, including several BJP leaders, as an Indian alternative to Twitter has been found to have a Chinese investor, admitted its founder and CEO Aparneya Radhakrishna.

The controversy surrounding the Koo app’s origins got only bigger as the French security researcher and ethical hacker Robert Baptiste (Elliot Alderson on Twitter) posted screenshots showing the platform’s domain registered in the United States by a registrant based in China, along with details of an alleged data leak.

Baptiste accused Koo of leaking information of its users like their email, marital status, date of birth, gender, etc. Radhakrishna responded to the claims saying that the “leaked data” is what the users agreed to be shown on their profile.

Radhakrishna also hit back at the claims of Chinese ownership by posting a screenshot of Koo’s domain information. Further, the Koo app also fell victim to impersonation on twitter. A fake account, @KooAppOfficial with more followers than the original account @kooindia has been heavily promoting the app for the past few days. However, after multiple reports, the account has been suspended by Twitter India.