Hours after the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) denied that it forced any smartphone manufacturer or telecom service provider to add a helpline number into people’s contact lists, Google accepted that it had in 2014 inadvertently coded the 112 distress number and the UIDAI number into its setup wizard for Android.
This in a way put to end the controversy surrounding the mysterious entry of the UIDAI number in the contact lists of many smartphone users around the country.
“Our internal review has revealed that in 2014, the then UIDAI helpline number and the 112 distress helpline number were inadvertently coded into the SetUp wizard of the Android release given to OEMs for use in India and has remained there since. Since the numbers get listed on a user’s contact list these get transferred accordingly to the contacts on any new device,” a statement from Google said.
Apologising for “any concern that this might have caused”, the statement from a Google spokesperson said it “would like to assure everyone that this is not a situation of an unauthorised access of their Android devices”.
“Users can manually delete the number from their devices.”
The statement said Google will work towards fixing this in an “upcoming release of SetUp wizard which will be made available to OEMs over the next few weeks”.
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