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Relax, Modi apps can't check if your new 2,000 notes are real

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DailyBite
DailyBiteNov 24, 2016 | 17:53

Relax, Modi apps can't check if your new 2,000 notes are real

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is all about apps right now. The “Digital India” prime minister has tried his best to user our nation into the digital age, whether through net-neutrality violations like “free basics” or by creating a cash vacuum through demonetisation that has pushed (read forced) people to go digital. Even the feedback for this train-wreck of a move was sought by the prime minister through his own app (props to his branding team).

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Even as the government reports the enormous amount approval given by the people in the survey, which some have claimed was skewed in favour of demonetisation to begin with, there is yet another Narendra Modi stamped app that has been causing some controversy.

The new Rs 2,000 note arrived in the news (and in our hands much later) with a few weird rumours, one of which was the note being embedded with a "Nano GPS Chip" that’d help detect black money. An additional rumour that somehow managed to spread despite the best efforts to curb such a thing was the fact that there’s an app that can detect if the currency is real or fake.

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Every time a user scanned a new Rs 2,000 note, the Modi Keynote app would play PM's speech on black money. [Photo: BGR.in]

The Modi Keynote app, released on Google Play on November 12, and had as many as 4 million downloads, being used by people to check if their Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 notes are authentic or fake, despite the fact that Barra Skull Studios – the developers of the app – clearly stated in their Google Play description that it was just for fun.

Obviously, the developers decided to remove their app from the store.

Barra Skull Studios told NDTV “The idea was to make people understand the key points spoken by our Prime Minister in a different and interesting way using augmented reality technology”.

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Every time a user scanned a new Rs 2,000 note, the Modi Keynote app would play Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on black money. The developers believed that this would have been an effective way to pass on the prime minister’s message to all the people.

Of course, thanks to the social media, misinformation spread like wildfire, claiming that this app actually did verify is the currency notes were real or counterfeit, which led the developers to take itr down. Additionally, their app has now found copycats, who are busy filling up Google Play with similar apps.

One of them is an app called Modi KeyNote by Dexter_Dev Entertainment (which thankfully declares itself as a prank app). The problem, however, lies in the fact that people still believe in rumours despite repeated disclaimers.

Given the fact that there still exist people, who believe that a satellite can detect black money thanks to GPS chips in the new currency, disclaimers in apps like these are not going to stop them from believing that there are apps that can tell whether a note is real. The only way to stop this steady flow of misinformation is to spread the word. And also stop your family and friends from wasting their time with stupid apps like these.  

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Last updated: November 24, 2016 | 17:54
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