Indian Government spams apparent propaganda internationally through Whatsapp messages

[WraithIndefinate]

Summary

On Sunday 15th March 2024, The currently appointed Indian Government sent out a Whatsapp campaign to millions of people - primary targeting Indians living in India and UAE (and some other parts of the world) but ended up spamming multiple different nationalities, even people with no ties to India, specially Pakistanis.

The article mentions that the message and attachment are apparently propaganda, distributed ahead of elections.

 

Quotes

Quote

A British resident of Dubai expressed curiosity saying “I am curious how they got our number”

Some people are claiming that the Indian government has bought inaccurate data of Indians living abroad - and how dangerous it is that the Indian government has contact information about people that seemingly have no connection to the country.

 

My thoughts

Definitely interesting, strange and a little scary how civilian information is sold to governments - but very funny how there was seemingly no data validation done before such a big campaign went out.

 

Sources

https://www.timesnownews.com/india/how-bjp-got-our-numbers-uae-pakistan-nationals-on-pm-modis-surprise-whatsapp-message-article-108594530/amp

https://m.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/viksit-bharat-sampark-messages-on-whatsapp-spark-controversy-601914

 

 

[StDragon]

I don't see how this is tech news in terms of innovation. At least, it's a given that technology in all its forms has been used by the state for command and control of the populous at some level, regardless of where on this planet you live, and your nationality. 

[Caroline]

>spam

>whatscrap

EVERY TIME

 

1 hour ago, WraithIndefinate said:

Definitely interesting, strange and a little scary how civilian information is sold to governments - but very funny how there was seemingly no data validation done before such a big campaign went out.

Goes like 10k users for $1 or less. It's not illegal or anything it's just the average smartphone user doesn't care in the absolute minimum about his own privacy and gives all his info to every service.

And spammers never check data, their objective is to spam as much as possible in the shortest periods of time via texts, calls, emails, whatever.

[SansVarnic]

-= Moved to General Discussion =-

Topic does not meet the definition of Tech News. Using tech doesn't make it tech news.

[Monkey Dust]

To be fair, the Indian government would have a lot of data to check.

 

Makes a mockery of the argument that the Chinese government is harvesting data on westerners via TikTok, and that ByteDance should sell it. If the Chinese really want our viewing habits, they could just buy it off a data broker.

[SansVarnic]

-= Locked =-

After further review, this topic has more of a political tone than what is allowed. 

Politics is still banned in the forums.