Shocking! Your Aadhaar card details are sold for just Rs. 500

The Indian government is pushing the citizens of the country to link their Aadhaar card to every other personal detail such as mobile number and bank account. In the meantime, the weak UIDAI security system has come as a big shock to the citizens of India.

We have already come across several incidents of Aadhaar details being leaked out in the public due to security breaches. The latest one is even shocking as it is a case of Aadhaar details being put up for sale. As per a report by The Tribune, anonymous sellers are providing unrestricted access to the details of any Aadhaar card numbers in India over WhatsApp. Notably, there are over one billion Aadhaar numbers created in the country so far.

The worst part is that the Aadhaar details are being sold by these sellers for just Rs. 500 over Paytm. The agents have created a gateway and pass on their login ID and passwords for the buyers to access the details, claims the report.

Due to this, you can end any Aadhaar number in the portal and get all the details of that specific individual those have been submitted to the UIDAI such as name, address, photo, phone number and email address.

The report has verified the occurrence of the Aadhaar details sale with a payment of Rs. 300 for which the agent has provided the software that will enable the printing of the Aadhaar card after keying in the Aadhaar number of anyone. The hackers have gained access to the Government of Rajasthan website as the software gives access to aadhaar.rajasthan.gov.in. From here, anyone can access and print the Aadhaar cards of any other Indian citizen.

The first level of investigation into this shows that the racket started around six months back when anonymous WhatsApp groups were created. These WhatsApp groups targeted more than three lakh village-level enterprise operators who were hired by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology that come under the Common Services Centres Scheme across the country. Eventually, these groups could gain access to the UIDAI data.

It goes without stating that accessing the Aadhaar details of others without their consent and printing the same is illegal in the country and it is a major national security breach.