Around 13 crore of Aadhar details are leaked

Bangalore, May 02: The central government ministry and a state government may have exposed the 13 crore Aadhaar numbers, according to a new research report issued by Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) on Monday.

The first two belong to the rural development ministry—the National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP)'s dashboard and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act’s (NREGA) portal.

The other two databases deal with Andhra Pradesh—the state's own NREGA portal and the online dashboard of a government scheme called "Chandranna Bima".

"Based on the numbers available on the websites looked at, the estimated number of Aadhaar numbers leaked through these four portals could be around 130-135 million and the number of bank account numbers leaked at around 100 million from the specific portals we looked at," said Amber Sinha and Srinivas Kodali, the authors of the research report.



Apart from accessing a person's details, the portals made it possible for anyone to get data on beneficiaries of welfare schemes. In many cases, it included bank account numbers of beneficiaries.

The report said that sensitive personal identity information such as Aadhaar number, caste, religion, address, photographs and financial information were easily available with a few clicks and suggested how poorly conceived these initiatives were.

The report highlights revealed that it was illegal to make personal data public and also refers to # #AadhaarLeaks, a campaign on twitter aimed at exposing the loopholes in the Aadhaar system.