Moneycontrol had earlier reported how the UIDAI’s toll free number was appearing in the contacts list on their phones by default.
Hours after Twiterrati and netizens raised their concerns over the UIDAI helpline number popping up in their phone’s contact list, Google on Friday night issued a statement saying that it occurred due to coding error on Android.
A Google spokesperson said: “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.
“We are sorry for any concern that this might have caused, and 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. We will work towards fixing this in an upcoming release of SetUp wizard which will be made available to OEMs over the next few weeks.”
Moneycontrol had earlier reported how the UIDAI’s toll free number was appearing in the contacts list on their phones by default.
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While most users who raised this issue on Twitter were using Android, Moneycontrol found some iPhone users who were surprised to find the number in their contact lists as well.
This may have been caused by transferring phone numbers from a previous android device to iOS.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Responding to the media on the subject earlier in the day, UIDAI said it has not asked telecom operators to save toll number on phones.