India

Major data breach of all vaccinated Indians, personal info made public: Report

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New Delhi: The private information of the lakhs of Indian citizens, who registered on the CoWIN app to get their COVID vaccination, appears to have been leaked to private players in a major data breach.

Trinamool Congress party national spokesperson (TMC) Saket Gokhale on Monday shared screenshots saying “personal details of all vaccinated Indians including mobile numbers, Aadhaar numbers, passport numbers, voter ID and details of family members” have been leaked. He said tweeted that the numbers are freely available.

Among the people whose details were shared include Opposition leaders like Rajya Sabha MP and TMC leader Derek O’Brien, Congress leader and former Union minister P Chidambaram and Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh and KC Venugopal.

Personal details of journalists Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt, Dhanya Rajendran and Rahul Shivshankar have also been leaked.

According to a report by Malayala Manorama, when a mobile number registered with the CoWIN portal is entered, the Telegram bot discloses the number of the ID card used for vaccination along with gender, birth year, and name of the vaccination centre, and his/her doses. With this massive data breach, the Aadhaar card, voter ID, and PAN card numbers of Indian citizens are accessible to anyone on Telegram.

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