Thread by @WolfieChristl

"CreditVidya—a highly successful fintech company that rated people’s creditworthiness—collected data from people using music apps"

India, data from mobile apps including GPS/contacts/messages, 25m profiles, 'trust scores' for loan decisions. This is wild: huffingtonpost.in/entry/fintech-…

CreditVidya was endorsed by the World Bank and is funded by 'Bharat Inclusion', which is supported by e.g. the Gates Foundation, J.P. Morgan and Omidyar, and claims to tackle 'financial inclusion'. By spying on unaware people?

Thread with additional info:

https://twitter.com/logic/status/1146619020289798145

'The more data that is available, the more robust the profile that we can create. Contact list data provides insights into the social network of an applicant, and consequently, helps to ascertain credit risk'

Personal data collected by CreditVidya's SDK: creditvidya.com/faqs/

Here's a list of dozens of Android apps that (did) contain references to 'api.creditvidya.com', also including apps by Universal Music: koodous.com/apks?search=ur…

Thx @logic for pointing me to @koodous_project, which seems to be an excellent collaborative app analysis platform!