A simple Google search reveals several government websites uploaded Excel sheets which contain sensitive personal data of thousands of individuals.
At a time when the government is making the Aadhaar Card mandatory for many schemes and services, a simple Google search reveals that a Central Government ministry has shirked in its efforts to secure the information provided by over a thousand citizens to avail a welfare scheme. This is not an isolated incident. A Google search carried out by the writer revealed several open source documents with sensitive details of thousands of individuals.
The universality of the Aadhaar Card follows the PAN card which was deemed as the identification almighty earlier. In the last month or so, the government has made the Aadhaar Card mandatory for filing Income Tax Returns (I-TR) and applying for a PAN card. This will come into effect from July while from April 1, the 16-digit unique identification number would be mandatory for opening an Employee Provident Fund (EPF) account. Finance Minister Arun Jailtey, while speaking in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, said Aadhaar may soon become the only card required to identify a person, replacing the voter ID and PAN card and other government-issued identity cards.
While the government kickstarted the Aadhaar project to provide each individual with a single unique identification number, and with the intention to bring down the nuisance of multiple identity cards, including the Passport, the legality of making it mandatory across schemes in under question.
Apart from that, its use to give proof of residence is also not entirely clear since it is not mandatory to provide address proof to get an Aadhaar card.
To make an Aadhaar card, there's a long list of documents that are accepted as proof of identity, address, proof of date of birth, and so on.
Here's the entire list:
From UIDAI website
When the government is pushing for the Aadhaar to become irreplaceable to avail welfare schemes for the poor and other essential services, it is imperative to find out if sensitive data provided by you is indeed safe with them or not. A quick Google search conducted by Twitter user @St_Hill, who highlighted the vulnerability of the data provided through Aadhaar to the government, revealed that your data is prone to be in the public domain with or without your knowledge, or is already public.
This includes your name, father's name, full address, date of birth, complete bank details, address proofs, cell phone numbers, passport details, PAN Card number, caste/ religion details, and more.
The question isn't if and whether the data can be made public, it may already be happening.
Google Search: aadhaar number name filetype:xls -uidai, says @St_Hill in a medium.com post
You will find several links of a central government ministry and of government-affiliated colleges and universities who have numerous Microsoft Excel sheets uploaded to their website which contains sensitive information about those who may have provided their Aadhaar card number and other details to avail welfare schemes provided by the central government.
Excel sheets with sensitive information of individuals uploaded by government websites available through a simple Google search.
While this open-to-public document was found on a central government ministry's website and had the details of over 1,300 people, another one, from the same source contains details of 2,838 individuals. Apart from the details mentioned above, it also includes the amount conferred to them as scholarship, account number, bank name, IFSC Code, Beneficiary Address, State, District, Pincode, and details of the university or college. This includes the roll number, stream (Commerce, Science, Arts), percentage, course details, institute address, the phone number of the institute, and its e-mail id. Mind you, these are details of college of 18-20 year-old college students.
Another document has made similar details available of those students in the Amravati district of Maharashtra who had availed a scholarship scheme.
Excel sheets with sensitive information of individuals uploaded by government websites available through a simple Google search.
Yet another publicly available Excel sheet has details of Series IV bond holders of a state-run company.
Excel sheets with sensitive information of individuals uploaded by government websites available through a simple Google search.
While the Aadhaar form takes consent from the applicant to allow UIDAI share the details provided with public agencies, as is seen by the question 8 in the form...
...making the information provided for Aadhaar public is in clear violation of the Aadhaar Bill which, under Section 29, states, "No Aadhaar number or core biometric information collected or created under this Act in respect of an Aadhaar number holder shall be published, displayed or posted publicly, except for the purposes as may be specified by regulations."
With sensitive data of thousands of individuals available to a layman through a simple search on the Internet, one can only imagine the consequences if such details fall into the hands of a fraudster(s).
Disclaimer: All the data in the screenshots has been blacked out before using it in the article.
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