A couple died by suicide after being harassed by agents of a loan app in Andhra Pradesh. Following this, state Chief Minister YS Jagan Moha Reddy directed officials to take strict action against online money-lending apps for harassing and blackmailing users.
According to a report by ANI news agency, the duo of Durgarao and Ramya Lakshmi had taken loans from different loan apps. When they could not repay the amount, the loan agents started threatening them by saying that they would share inappropriate pictures of them on social media.
The Chief Minister has directed to hand over financial assistance to East Godavari District Collector Madhavi Lata. Five lakh each to the children of the victim.
Last month, search engine giant Google reported that it had bought 2,000 . removed more than loan application From the Play Store in India from January this year for breach of terms, misrepresentation of information and suspicious offline behavior.
A senior official said the tech giant is trying to tighten policies in the coming weeks to call for more scrutiny in the sector.
loan app problem Google APAC (Asia Pacific Region) senior director and head of trust and security, Saikat Mitra, said the issue is “at the peak”, and may be falling short of the attention and attention the issue has to offer.
“We are in the process of some more policy changes that are going to come out in a few weeks… Harder investigation,” he said.
Mitra said the nature of the ‘loan app’ problem varies between markets and added that in India it is a combination of misrepresentation, non-compliance with policies and regulations and unfair offline or “real world” behavior of such apps on recovery. Is. other actions.
“This includes questions like…. Is the loan app majorly disclosing what people are signing up for, eg rates… Are you affiliated with an approved NBFC or a bank? If… is that bank on RBI’s blacklist. … It also gets into things offline, for which we don’t have visibility, but we get inputs from law enforcement agencies,” he elaborated.
On the issue of new rules and government policies, Mitra said, “Whenever rules come, we work closely with the government and industry.”
“We think, we are all trying to achieve the same goals… which is respecting privacy and security. We think our policies should really help us achieve this. When Even when regulation comes, we have a dialogue and we make sure we present our point of view,” he said.
catch all business News, market news, today’s fresh news events and breaking news Updates on Live Mint. download mint news app To get daily market updates.