Aadhaar has been linked in so many places that there are countless unaccountable organizations and people who have copies of an Aadhaar. From couriers to schools and hospitals to cremation grounds. And of course government departments. As a result confidential details of individuals are constantly being put into public with little oversight and no control.
The Delhi High Court recently heard a Public Interest Litigation by Prof. Shamnad Basheer through which he has sought exemplary damages from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), for “negligence/ wilful recklessness”. The petition claims that such negligence has resulted in repeated compromising of the privacy of Aadhaar holders through Read more…
Recently the UK based company, Cambridge Analytica has been in the news for illegally harvesting user data from Facebook and enabling the use of this stolen data to influence the US Presidential election in 2016 in favour of Donald Trump. Cambridge Analytica has also been linked to several other elections including the Brexit referendum that led to Britain leaving the EU. (more…)
An Andhra Pradesh government maintained website has hosted a dashboard app that can search people in 13 districts using "religion" and "caste" amongst other categories. According to Huffingtonpost India, the dashboard in the aforementioned website, allows anyone to search for data based on terms such as "Hindu", "Muslim", "Zoroastrian" and Read more…
Frequent warnings by banks and police are apparently not the solution to combating debit/credit card fraud. The Hindu reports that Cyber Cell officials in Kerala's Kozhikode district are discovering three new cases every month on average. The victims are usually educated middle-class families or the elderly, and many are yet Read more…
According to The Tribune, in a recent twist of events a private operator working at an Aadhaar counter at the District Administration Complex in Jalandhar was found to have saved over 921 e-copies of Aadhaar cards in his personal laptop. When asked , the operator said that he HAD to Read more…
Yavatmal: A group of youngsters, who had volunteered to desilt wells to allow their use as water sources in view of the extreme scarcity of drinking water, found thousands of original Aadhaar cards dumped in a well on Sunday. The cards were packed in nylon gunny bags, and weighed down Read more…
Babubhai Boriwal (53) and Sampatlal Shah (61), owners of “Pandit Deendayal grahak bhandar” shops under Gujarat’s Annapurna Yojana PDS, were arrested by the Crime Branch in Surat. They were using an illegal software that accessed leaked biometric data in order to acquire coupons in the name of different PDS beneficiaries Read more…
In a response to an RTI, the UIDAI stated that 210 government websites had leaked Aadhaar data online. leaked data included name, address, other details and Aadhaar numbers for information of general public. Earlier, in May 2017, a study published by the CIS had showed that just 4 government websites had Read more…
After the report by the Tribue that showed that access to Aadhaar data was being sold for Rs 500 on WhatsApp, India Today conducted its own sting operation. In it, they approached various official Aadhaar enrolment centers posing as buyers interested in buying data. Since no one appears to have Read more…
A shocking report in The Tribune states that they purchased access to the complete Aadhaar database including all information provided by Aadhaar number holders to the UIDAI for a mere Rs.500 for the access. The reporter, Rachna Khaira, posing as "Anamika" contacted a WhatsApp phone number 7610063464 and made the payment Read more…