Aarogya Setu suffers login issues, govt agency says technical teams on the job

NEW DELHI: Users of Aarogya Setu, on Tuesday-Wednesday, ran into login errors thrown up by what the government claims is the world’s most successful contact tracing app for coronavirus.

“Some users have reported login errors on Aarogya Setu. Our technical teams are on the job. We will be back soon. Sorry for the inconvenience,” MyGov chief executive officer (CEO) Abhishek Singh told reporters.

MyGov, which manages the Aarogya Setu app, is the central government's citizen-centric online platform and comes under the purview of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

Despite its success, the Aarogya Setu app, which has been designed to trace those who come in contact with infected coronavirus persons, has been questioned by security experts and hackers for possible privacy violations. The government has denied any such violations and even open-sourced the code for the app as a way to mollify such speculations.

As of mid-May, the Aarogya Setu app had more than 10 crore registered users, just 41 days after its launch on 2 April.

The government had drawn flak for making the download of the app mandatory for all public and private sector employees. Later, the Centre withdrew its order and made the app mandatory only for passengers travelling in trains.

The Aarogya Setu has been the top downloaded app in the health and fitness category on both Android devices and iPhones since its launch, said a report by app analytics firm, App Annie. The app ranked number one in the category daily between 2 April and 23 June. On Google play store, it has been downloaded more than 100 million times.