A case with India’s McDonald’s delivery app would cause many Europeans and Americans to experience a privacy culture shock. The application has been leaking user data for months, and the Indian branch of McDonald’s has been willingly ignoring the problem. Due to India’s lax privacy laws, the junk food conglomerate isn’t penalized for not fixing the issue.
McDonald’s – Bad For Your Body AND Your Privacy
The McDelivery app in India was reported by Fallible on February 4, 2017. The junk food company acknowledged the problem, but didn’t fix it. Fallible tried to contact McDonald’s again – in March 2017, but no response followed.
After the company went public with their discoveries, McDonald’s responded and released a fix. According to Fallible, this fix is incomplete and the McDelivery app still has many leaks. 2.2 million customers are reportedly affected by the leak.
A willing hacker can use those breaches to get a lot of data from the McDonald’s customers. Information like:
- Real names
- Email Addresses
- Phone Numbers
- Home Addresses
- Social Media Profile Links
Let’s hope that some of the money McDonald’s generates from making people fat would be spent on fixing the security issues.
Privacy Regulations and Big Companies
It shouldn’t come as a shocker that big companies rarely care about their customers and would only protect them if the law requires it. The average user is also to blame for not demanding protection of user data.
Since India doesn’t have many effective privacy watchdogs similar to Europe and North America, the cyber-security climate in the country is very explosive. Getting your personal data stolen is too high a price for a Big Mac. India is also the territory with the most ransomware and browser hijacker infections.
In the West, we’re better in that we only let the government get away with violating us and our privacy.