Why do I get porn when I use your app? Indian Railways responds

railways-1
railways-1
Avatar of Linda Hohnholz
Written by Linda Hohnholz

“Obscene and vulgar ads are very frequently appearing on the IRCTC ticket booking app. This is very embarrassing and irritating @RailMinIndia @IRCTCofficial @PiyushGoyalOffc kindly look into it,” a user tweeted.

The IRCTC app user, named Anand Kumar, communicated to IRCTC’s official account, tagging Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, that he was seeing obscene ads on the IRCTC app and even attached screenshots of the advertisements visible on his mobile screen.

The Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) made an honest and – for the user, maybe somewhat shocking – comeback about its official ticket booking application and the complaint of obscene advertisements on the app.

“IRCTC uses Googles ad serving tool ADX for serving ads. These ads uses cookies to target the user. Based on user history and browsing behavior ads are shown. Pl clean and delete all browser cookies and history to avoid such ads. – IRCTC Official,” was the response.

The IRCTC’s official customer support account, Indian Railways Seva, advised Kumar to first clear his own browsing history.

Web developer named Gagandeep S. Luthra said that the IRCTC’s HTML code shows Javascript loaded from a push notification platform, which is not strictly monitored and one can send any link.

“A look at the irctc html code shows Javascript Loaded from izooto.com, which is a Push Notification Platform. Push Notifications are not strictly monitored and one can send any vulgar link endlessly using that. I was surprised to see its use on irctc,” Luthra tweeted.

About the author

Avatar of Linda Hohnholz

Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

Share to...