The government has stepped in to shut down websites to blame for accusations of leaking Aadhaar data in a suspected breach. Whether or not it will do enough to curb the data protection flaws of the Aadhaar system remains to be seen as the latest breach exposed millions of citizens’ Aadhaar and PAN card details for bad actors.
Vulnerabilities found on the websites, which were detected by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, naturally call into question their commitment to privacy, as well as if Aadhaar Act has a grip on data privacy.
Under the Aadhaar Act, personal information is prohibited to be publicly accessible and shared in any domain, falling on the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to make complaints to the police about the unspecified sites.
The IT Ministry said: “It has come to the notice of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology that a few websites were exposing sensitive identifiable information including Aadhaar Card and PAN details of Indian citizens. The matter has been taken up seriously and the government accords highest priority to safe cyber security practices”.
