Over the past few weeks, an anonymous person, claiming to be a French mobile app developer, has been using his Twitter account to flag security concerns in the Aadhaar system. Recently, the account released a video showing a hack into the Aadhaar application (app). The Unique Identification Authority of India has maintained that Aadhaar remains safe and secure. Mayank Jain spoke to Robert Baptiste, the man behind the Twitter account called 'Elliot Alderson', to understand the way forward for citizens to keep their information safe.
French hacker Elliot Alderson had earlier pointed out UIDAI helpline (1800-300-1947) could just be "the tip of the iceberg", hinting there could be additional data or trackers on Indian phone manufacturers' devices.
Many people posted screenshots of the alleged MobiKwik user data, which, according to sources, was up for sale for 1.5 bitcoin or about $86,000.
On Tuesday, a French hacker and cyber security expert Elliot Alderson had claimed that 'a security issue has been found' in the app and that 'privacy of 90 million Indians is at stake'. Dismissing the claims, the government said 'no personal information of any user has been proven to be at risk by this ethical hacker'.
Data privacy, he said, is a broader argument beyond Aadhaar as it includes everything such as issues related to mobile phones and social media data.
French security researcher Robert Baptiste posted a screenshot suggesting the micro-blogging platform that offers a Twitter-like experience in Indian languages had Chinese connections.
The UIDAI said rumour mongers attempted to tarnish the image of Aadhaar for a Google's inadvertent act that led to appearance of its old helpline number 1800 300 1947 in the contact list of several mobile phone users.
Google said the numbers can be manually deleted from the phones. It also promised to fix the same in future editions of its setup wizard.
'When a person is capable of infecting 50 others, will you think about the privacy of the person or about protecting the lives of people?'
While experts claimed that Patanjali's Swadeshi messaging app was removed form Google Play over security concerns, Kimbho declared that it was removed because of heavy traffic.
An all-out war had erupted on Twitter on Saturday after TRAI chief gave out his Aadhaar number, challenging anyone to show how mere knowledge of the number can be misused to harm him, triggering a deluge of tweets that claimed to disclose his personal details -- from PAN to mobile number.
'It is really troublesome that someone in a position of power is misleading people and presumably, citizens of the country to give up data.' 'That is not a part of informed consent.'
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