135 million Aadhaar accounts, 100 million bank account numbers leaked from govt portals, claims CIS report

The Centre for Internet and Society has claimed that lack of security practices have resulted in possible leaking of Aadhaar numbers and personal information of 135 million people from four government portals. 

“Based on the numbers available on the websites looked at, estimated number of Aadhaar numbers leaked through these four portals could be around 130-135 million,” the report by CIS said.

Also, the report suggests that 100 million bank account numbers could also have been ‘leaked’ from the four portals, including National Social Assistance Programme, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, as well as two websites of the Andhra Pradesh government.

“Over 23 crore beneficiaries have been brought under Aadhaar programme for DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer), and if a significant number of schemes have mishandled data in a similar way, we could be looking at a data leak closer to that number,” it cautioned.

A CIS report titled ‘Information Security Practices of Aadhaar (or lack thereof): A Documentation of Public Availability of Aadhaar Numbers with Sensitive Personal Financial Information’ has made the disclosure.

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“The lack of consistency of data masking and de- identification standard is an issue of great concern…the masking of Aadhaar numbers does not follow a consistent pattern,” the report added.

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