Google apologizes for this mistake

New Delhi, Aug 04: The Tech giant Google has taken responsibility for the presence of UIDAI helpline number in phones across the nation. On Friday there was a growing concern among citizens after UIDAI's number, which they hadn't saved, showed up in the contacts list.

Google said that in 2014, this number and 114 other helpline numbers were 'inadvertently coded into the SetUp wizard of the Android release given to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) for use in India'.

Google apologized for the same and said the numbers can be manually deleted from the phones. It also promised to fix the same in future editions of its setup wizard.

"This isn't a situation of an unauthorized access of their Android devices," it added.

Toll-free numbers can be pre-programmed into devices by telecom operators, but they denied it. Twitter users Arnav Gupta (an Android application developer), and Kingsly John pointed out that Google might be responsible.

"The number doesn't exist on a fresh install before the device connects to the Internet. So it is coming from the Internet, and not present in the OS itself," Gupta had tweeted.

After this incident, the UIDAI was slammed, with many claiming it was a breach of privacy.

The body then released a statement saying they didn't ask telecom providers to add the number, and that the said number was no longer their valid toll-free number. It was changed to '1947', two years ago.