Kimbho, a social messaging app launched by yoga guru Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved Ltd, disappeared from Google PlayStore on Thursday, a day after it was launched. It is not visible on the iOS app store either, NDTV reported. Some initial reports had compared Patanjali’s app to global messaging platform WhatsApp.
An anonymous French hacker who goes by the name Elliott Anderson on Twitter called Kimbho a “security disaster”. He said he could access the messages of all users once he downloaded the app. Anderson also said that the app was a copy of another, as the description and screenshots in the stores were the same.
Alderson has previously tweeted about security weaknesses in Aadhaar and other government initiatives.
“Now Bharat will speak. After launching sim cards, Ramdev has launched a new messaging application called Kimbho,” Patanjali spokesperson SK Tijarawala had said on Wednesday. On May 27, Patanjali had launched “Swadeshi Samriddhi SIM cards”, in a tie-up with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited.
“Now WhatsApp will be given competition,” Tijarawala had said, adding that Kimbho is a Sanskrit word that means “How are you?”.
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