Google’s new messaging app Allo draws criticism over privacy concerns
23 May 2016
Days after Google's announcement of its new Allo messaging app at the annual I/O 2016 conference, the yet-to-launch messaging app had drawn criticism over privacy concerns.
Allo, the search company's text-based messaging app was expected to take on more-established players like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Snapchat.
Powered by Google's new and upcoming AI chatbot Google Assistant, users of Allo would even be able to book a restaurant and send automated replies to their friends.
However, Allo is taking flak for its 'end-to-end' encryption feature, which is not enabled across the app by default. The feature is only available in the Incognito mode and has come in for criticism from whistleblower Edward Snowden on Twitter. According to Snowden, Google's decision to disable end-to-end encryption was dangerous. He called on users to avoid the app, in a tweet, re-tweeted over 8000 times.
Snowden's comment comes in the wake of a controversy around a blogpost published by a Google engineer Thai Duong, who tried to explain why end-to-end encryption was not enabled by default in a bid to address privacy fears around the app.
The new Allo chat app is not available to the public currently.
Meanwhile, experts point out that in general, most people forgot about 'Incognito mode'. Google's Allo offers include some powerful tools like smart reply and in-built search, both of which dealt with considerable amount of personal data.
Without end-to-end encryption, there existed a huge privacy loophole which could be exploited by hackers, according to commentators.
Google says it Allo app is designed to harvest data, meaning it learns more about the user by mining chats, saving search history and reply patterns. During the launch of Allo, Google said the new chat app was designed to make people chat smartly by typing less.
According to experts, if Allo acted like a bot for personal chats, end-to-end encryption should have been made mandatory by default, as was recently done by Facebook-owned WhatsApp.