The One with the Aadhaar Scare

I have always, like most of us, believed that technology can and should be employed wherever possible. So when Aadhaar was announced, the possibilities amazed me and I looked forward to being a part of the digital revolution. As with any technology, there were apprehensions and people were sceptic about privacy and data security.

I generally am not very finicky about digital privacy, simply because Google knows way too much about me already. And given the awesome products Google builds for us, I am more than happy to sell a piece of my digital existence in exchange of the 'free' services.

So when people raised issues about data privacy and security concerns with respect to Aadhaar, I was never really concerned. But something happened early last month and I am not too sure about it now.

On the 8th of March, when I was at office my phone beeped in quick succession. This generally happens when somebody shares a 'Guess the movies from the emojis' kind of message on any of my several WhatsApp groups. I whipped out my phone, expecting to break the monotony of post-lunch office work with some sharp deduction skills. But I was in for a surprise.

These beeps were from a sudden spurt of mails in my inbox and this is what my inbox looked like.

So now I am all like "You had my curiosity, now you have my attention". And it looks like I have just received a notification from UIDAI, the Aadhaar issuing body, which informs me that a biometric authentication was unsuccessfully attempted against my Aadhaar ID at Airtel. And to add to the drama, this happened 7 times within a space of just 2 minutes (from 04:08PM to 04:10PM).

The mail mentioned the email address help@uidai.gov.in which I was supposed to contact in case the authentication wasn't carried out by me. And I promptly dropped them a mail. Till date, I haven't received a response from them. (A call to the given number did not go through)

Why this incident scares me is because so many attempts in such a small time duration seems to point to a machine driven attempt and system failure at some level. Thankfully all these attempts were unsuccessful (and that is reassuring) and I didn't face any monetary or data loss. But in case, security or data was indeed compromised, I wouldn't know what to do and that is what is really scary.

One step you can take to avoid your Aadhaar bio-metric data from being misused, is block your bio-metric data. This would mean that you cannot verify yourself using the bio-metric scans, until you unblock your bio-metric data. But more importantly, nobody else can impersonate you either.

You can block or unblock your bio-metric data here!
LINK : https://resident.uidai.gov.in/biometric-lock

Aadhaar, according to me, is something that is a must-have as far as a vast, developing country like ours is concerned. However, I do hope that better security measures and redressal systems are in place, because any digital system has its weak links. And a breach in a system as crucial as the Aadhaar would break the back of the digital revolution that India is trying to embark on.