Mitron Back On Play Store With Dubious Privacy Policy

After getting temporarily suspended by Google, Mitron is now back again on Google Play Store to take on Bytedance-owned short-video sharing platform TikTok. The application was pulled by Google, earlier this week, for violating several policies of the application downloading platform.

In a blog, vice president of Android and Google Play said Mitron was removed for a number of technical policy violations. He clarified that Google has an established process of working with developers to help them fix issues and resubmit their apps.

With the relaunch of the application, the app developers of the application have updated the UX and privacy policy which was earlier missing from the application and Google Play Store.

However, Inc42, using internet tools, was able to find out that the policies were not written by a legal expert but were generated through a free privacy policy generator. This tool simply replaces the company’s name every time and generates a new policy for each application.

This means that the developers didn’t pay much attention to the privacy of the users and might have just uploaded the policy to bypass Google’s verification checks. With no stringent policy, it is yet to be seen how the company is securing the data of the users.

Interestingly, the application is still missing from the iOS or the Apple App Store, which could be due to Apple’s more stringent app review policy and the fact that developers have to pay a fee to launch an iOS app.

Meanwhile, Mitros also claims to have fixed numerous bugs which were there in the previous version of the application. Earlier, the Pakistani developers of the application had alleged that the Indian developers didn’t make any changes to the Mitron app.

According to media reports, the application is said to have been owned by IIT Roorkee student Shivank Agarwal. The registered entity of Mitron — Mitron Tv Pvt Ltd — was incorporated by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) on May 31. The company address, according to the MCA filing, is in Bengaluru.

Before getting blocked by Google Play Store, Mitron had amassed over 5 Mn users within a month of launch. The application had become the preferred destination for millions of Indians as they were looking to move away from TikTok, given the spate of controversies around the Chinese app.

However, in a matter of days, it was revealed that the application was originally developed by Pakistan-based software making company Qboxus which had sold the source code to Indian-based developers for INR 2,600.