Skip to main content

Vodafone India privacy problem: exposes phone numbers

Vodafone India is exposing website surfer/user's phone number to the partner website when using mobile data plan. It might be offering hidden API to those partner websites to uniquely identify users. I have noticed it around 1-year before, thought about blogging, but forgot it at that time. Now, I have got some time and so thought of explaining the issue.

How I noticed the issue?

Sometime ago, I've bought SanDisk microSD card. In the wrapper, they've mentioned about some offer about hungama (Still available in SanDisk website at www.sandisk.in/campaign/landing/hungama/offer_three). The URL mentioned was offers.hungama.com/sandisk3/ and when I opened that in my mobile browser, it was prompting with Welcome, 91-98XXXXXXXX.
Phone number leaked by Vodafone India


I was shocked as I never seen anything like that before. So, I immediately opened the same URL in my desktop browser and got completely different page:
Desktop version of the same page

And, again I tried to open the same page in mobile browser with Wi-Fi alone (by disabling Mobile Data), and now also they couldn't identify my mobile number. So, I realized that it might be something to do with the network (Vodafone). Initially I thought that they may be decoding the phone number from IP address. So, I asked Heleena (my wife) to figure out some pattern for that. Then it turn out that there is no definite pattern. I have also analyzed HTTP headers when browsing through Vodafone internet. Then, realized that hungama might be utilizing some hidden API from Vodafone to decode user's IP to mobile number.

Privacy Issue


At least for me, this looks like a serious privacy issue. hungama at least openly exposes the phone number to users, so that users can know that hungama can read their numbers/identity. But, there may be many sites--especially many social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc may still be uniquely identifying users without revealing it at all. 
Labels:

Comments

Ohmkumar said…
Hi Rajesh,
Welcome back :)

Hope you agree, nothing is private in online...
May 1, 2016, 3:52:00 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stampede and the "Dirty" "Dark" Crowd

Actor Ajith Kumar’s recent interview has sparked quite a few conversations on social media. The part that caught my attention, was his take on crowds. About 30 years ago, when I first joined a college in Madurai after growing up in other places, I experienced a few cultural shocks. Perhaps these weren’t unique to Madurai, but that’s where I first noticed them. One major thing that stood out was the behavior of crowds. For instance, if you suddenly see people rushing to board a bus, chances are there’s a pickpocket in action. During one of Madurai's annual festivals, I noticed some young men carrying water bags — not to distribute water, but to spill it on women, often on their chests. Shockingly, this was almost normalized; parents would quietly tolerate it to avoid public embarrassment, walking a little farther behind the crowd. When some women happened to witness this, they would just shoo the boys away instead of confronting them. The crowd, in such cases, became a kind of...
Post a Comment
Read more

Converting PSD with PHP/ImageMagick

After seeing feature rich options in Imagick PECL extension at Mikko Koppanen 's (the author) website and also impressed with ImageMagick 's features, I have decided to use it for the PSD to XHTML conversion website that I'm architecting and managing. Since, the team wants programming help for converting PSD images, I have tried it (documentation is sparse on PSD handling) Converting PSD to PNG/JPEG/etc Note that, flattenImages() is needed for layered/multi-page PSD file. <?php $im = new Imagick('test.psd'); $im->flattenImages(); $im->setImageFormat('png'); $im->writeImage('test.png'); ?> Extracting PSD layers One by one <?php $im = new Imagick('test.psd'); $im->setImageFormat('png'); for ($i = 0, $num_layers = $im->getNumberImages(); $i $im->setImageIndex($i); $im->writeImage('layer' . $i . '.png'); } ?> Note that, there is a better version below In a single call with writeIm...
5 comments
Read more

Gen Y workforce, a threat to Indian IT?

I belong to Gen X . I'm noticing high change in the way of thinking and approaches of Gen Y (born after 1982 or 1985) workforce. Whenever I sit for interviews, I feel getting quite old... Characteristics of Gen Y (as I noted) Freshers Everybody owns mobile phones and laptop. At least using them for 2-years. Only very few people know touch typing. Almost all are interested to start their career in programming; but they don't have any basic knowledge. Most of the people can speak in English. I'm noticing a huge change here; In our generation, many people would be having good programming skill but can't express them in English People from CS aka Computer Science background says that they don't use computer labs as they own laptop. I can remember my college days at The American College, Madurai during my PGDCA and MCA--we often used to demand more lab time. I still remember that I'd run to computer lab by 7am and would still find few guys...
1 comment
Read more