IRCTC user criticizes obscene and vulgar ads. Know its reply.

On Wednesday an Indian railway's passengers support Twitter handle asked a user to delete his Internet browsing history while responding to his complaint of "vulgar and obscene" advertisements getting displayed on IRCTC's ticket booking app.

The Indian Railways Seva handle (@RailwaySeva) was set up in December 2017 for passenger support, also instructed the complainant that online advertisements depend on the personal browsing history of a user.

"Obscene and vulgar ads are very frequently appearing on the IRCTC ticket booking app. This is very embarrassing and irritating," the complainant wrote. The user also tagged official Twitter handles of the Railways Minister, IRCTC and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal's office in the tweet.

Replying to the complaint, the Indian Railways Seva tweeted, "IRCTC uses Googles ad serving tool ADX for serving ads. These ads use cookies to target the user. Based on user history and browsing behaviour ads are shown. Pl, clean and delete all browser cookies and history to avoid such ads. - IRCTC Official"

Cyber expert Jiten Jain said PTI the online ads depend on a user's ad preferences and the kind of content one browse, "And the users themselves give Google the permission to show such ads when they agree to their terms and conditions while subscribing to its services. Although it is not 100 per cent, because in some cases Google also puts forth some ads on its own online."