Fast Medium
It looks like the Mitron app, which tried to use both local voice and anti-TikTok, was not written by an IIT student. News18 learned that all Mitron source code, including the full feature set and user interface, was purchased from the Pakistani company Qboxus. According to Irfan Sheikh, the founder and CEO of Qboxus, his company sold the source code of its application to the Mitron promoter for $ 34 (~ 2600 Rs). In an interview with fastmedium,
Sheikh said: "We expect our clients to use our code and create something themselves. But the Mitron developer chose our exact product, changed the logo, and sent it to his store. "
However, the sheikh confirms that the problem is not like that. "There is no problem with what the programmer did. He paid for the script and used it, which is fine. The problem, however, is that people call it an application created in India, which is not true, especially since they have not made any changes. " Sheikh also confirmed that his company was sold to Mitron for $ 34 for CodeCanyon, or about 2,600 Rs. When asked about the data hosting process, Sheikh said that although Qboxus offers the option of hosting user data on its server, Mitron decided not to, and instead decided to host its user data on its own server. However, until now it was unclear about Mitron's treatment of user data.
In an email response to News18 inquiries, ShopKiller e-Commerce, which is the Mitron app promoter, said: "We want to work in hidden mode and we don't want people to know us by name. I find (article) a little disappointing. I would like you to appreciate the fact that we are working hard on the application, and the reason for developing the application was to create an alternative for people "Make In India". Although Make in India narrative can work for many people, especially with aatmanirbhar and singer prime minister Narendra Modi for local pressure, it is important to maintain control and balance before promoting such applications. ShopKiller, the nickname hiding the app's promoters, did not provide an adequate response regarding Mitron's privacy policy or any information regarding the lack of details about the application.
Please note that buying the application's source code and using it under a different name is not illegal or unprecedented. In the past, Qboxus has built many applications that act as clones of other popular applications. Some of his offers include Hashgram (based on Instagram), Foodies Single Restaurant (like Zomato) and TicTic (replicated with TikTok). From the latter it is one of their most popular offers in the Google Play store, with over 5000 downloads and 50 strange reviews with a rating of 3.3.
In addition to offering these applications for direct download, Qboxus also offers the source codes of its applications for purchase by other interested parties. Some applications in addition to Mitron that were based on TicTic Qboxus and therefore offer a very similar interface as Mitron, include "Follow" (released in September 2019), KidsTok (released in December 2019) and HotToks (released in December 2019 on). As a result, Mitron and his team, who still want to work "invisible", have no reason to claim that his application is a built-in alternative to TikTok in India, which they have developed from scratch. In fact, the team did not even put effort into changing the interface bits, which makes the practice clearly unfair.
Given the current situation of the application without the appropriate security protocol on Google Play, it will turn out whether Google will punish the Mitron application for operating without any privacy policy, lack of clarity as to what it does with user data, and simply jumps to Make in Fashionable India by buying the source code of the TikTok clone.
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