User data safe; stored in encrypted form in Mumbai's AWS data centers: Chingari CEO

Indian video-sharing app Chingari has been in the news after becoming one of the most popular TikTok-alternative app, after Indian government banned 59 Chinese apps over data security concerns.

To assure Indians that the Indian TikTok alternative is safe to use, CEO Sumit Ghosh stated that the encrypted data is stored in servers in Mumbai and is secure from any kinds of breach.

“All the user data is stored in secure AWS data centers in Mumbai. The AWS team, along with our team is on it 24x7 in terms of security," Sumit Ghosh, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Chingari, told Times Now. 

Ghosh also stated that the company does not store any personal information of users like age, gender, etc, in the AWS data centres. "We only let users log in to our platform if they log in through Google. So, essentially you have given that data to Google, and the company gives us a handshake that this is an authenticated Google user and allow them on Chingari," he added.

However, Chingari may collect the said information for advertisers. When it does, the user data will be encrypted and stored in a secure manner and the company would again collaborate with AWS for the same.

Furthermore, Ghosh also stated that since the stored data is encrypted with a 256-bit SHA algorithm, even if someone tries to breach the servers, they will still get the encrypted data and therefore the user data will not be compromised.

Recently, the company behind Chingari - Globussoft’s website was compromised with malware. However, Ghosh cleared the air saying that Chingari app has a different security/ engineering team and user data is not compromised.

The app has got over 10 million downloads in a very short span, helping it reach the top charts of Apple and Google App Stores.