Tag: aadhaar numbers

UIDAI to Prompt Aadhaar Card Holders to Update Biometrics Once Every 10 Years, Says Official

Aadhaar card holders will be encouraged by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to voluntarily update their biometric data every ten years. As per a report, officials have stated that the government body will push people to update their facial and fingerprint scans connected to their Aadhaar card over time. People aged above 70 years will reportedly be exempt from the prompt. Currently, children aged between five to 15 years are required to update their biometrics. Aadhaar enrolment of children aged below five years is carried out based on the facial image of the child, and biometric authentication of the parent or guardian.

Citing official sources, PTI reported that the UIDAI will encourage people to voluntarily update their biometrics and demographics data once in 10 years. This could drive people to update their Aadhaar over time. Aadhaar card holders above the age of 70 years will not be prompted by the government body.

Exempting a minor percentage of people in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Ladakh, Aadhaar custodian UIDAI has reportedly enrolled nearly all adults in India. Due to the NRC (National Register of Citizens) issue, Aadhaar enrolment started late in Meghalaya, as per the report, which states that remote areas are left to be covered in Nagaland and Ladakh.

Aadhaar saturation level among adult residents is now near universal and the overall saturation level is 93.65 percent, the official told PTI. As per the report, the total fresh enrolment in August was only 24.2 lakh.

At present, biometrics are not collected for Aadhaar enrolment of children up to the age of five. Instead, the UIDAI enrols younger children using a facial scan, and biometric authentication of the parent or guardian. However, children aged between five and 15 years are required to furnish their biometrics at an Aadhaar Seva Kendra.

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Aadhaar Data of Farmers Exposed by Government’s PM Kisan Website, Security Researcher Reports

Aadhaar data of a large number of farmers was leaked by a government website designed for the welfare of the agriculture sector in India, a security researcher has reported. The website, called PM Kisan, allows the government to distribute grants to farmers under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi programme. However, due to an issue, one of its parts was publicly exposing Aadhaar numbers of enrolled farmers. The website has registered over 110 million farmers since its launch in 2019.

Security researcher Atul Nair said in a post on Medium that a part of the PM Kisan website was leaking the Aadhaar number of its registered farmers.

“The website provides an endpoint, which returns information about the beneficiary. This endpoint was also sending Aadhaar numbers,” Nair told Gadgets 360.

The issue was first spotted by the researcher in late January and was reported by India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In). Shortly after receiving the report, the nodal agency forwarded the details to the concerned authorities. They, however, apparently took some months to fix the exposure.

Nair wrote in his post that the issue was fixed in late May. He told Gadgets 360 that he had confirmed that the issue was no longer reproducible.

However, it is not confirmed whether an attacker was able to breach the data until it got fixed.

CERT-In appreciated the researcher for reporting the issue, though it did not explicitly confirm the fix or whether the data was not breached.

Gadgets 360 has reached out to the National Informatics Centre (NIC) — the developer and maintainer of the PM Kisan website. This article will be updated when the department responds.

Aadhaar numbers of individuals in the country are not of confidential nature, per the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) — the statutory authority that is mandated to issue the 12-digit uniquely identified numbers. Nevertheless, it does restrict users from sharing Aadhaar cards on public platforms.

This is notably not the first time when the Aadhaar data of individuals was exposed by a government website. In 2019, the Jharkhand government reportedly exposed the unique identification numbers of its thousands of workers.

A few days later, state-owned liquid petroleum gas (LPG) manufacturer Indane had also allegedly exposed Aadhaar details of millions of its consumers.

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