TRAI Chief’s Personal Details Leaked after He Challenges to Prove How Aadhaar can be Misused

Aadhar is a controversial issue in India. The government has almost made it mandatory as a citizen living in the country. However, the controversies related to the Aadhar Card aren’t rare. In the last March, we have seen a French security expert pointing out the loopholes in the system on Twitter.

More than that, the private details of millions of Indians were risked with data breaches. What you are going to read may scare you a bit. Even the people who carry out these practices can’t keep their details private.

After Telecom Regulator’s Aadhar Challenge, His Personal Details Leaked

It all started when the Telecom Regulating Authority of India’s (TRAI) chairman R.S. Sharma on Saturday disclosed his Aadhar Number in public on Twitter. He also challenged everyone to show how they can harm him just by using the number he revealed.

We could see the challenge has evoked the hacker in many Twitter users. Just hours after his Tweet went live, we saw people coming up with his phone number, addresses, PAN number, and even photographs. Elliot Alderson led the efforts to publicize the private details of Sharma. In the past, he showed us there are indeed security loopholes in Aadhar card system.

While publishing his Aadhar number, the TRAI head added, “Now I give this challenge to you: Show me one concrete example where you can do any harm to me.” He has got around 3000+ retweets and likes for the number containing tweet.

You may remember an Aadhar privacy breach happened a few months ago as someone published all the details on a website. In the light of the previous incident, we could conclude that the details that come out might already be available for the public. One confidential data that came out is the PAN card number. R.S. Sharma didn’t validate nor deny it.

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When contacted by the media, he has declined to make a detailed comment saying ‘Let the challenge run for some time’.

Mr Sharma has engaged in the verbal battle with many Twitter users even late at night. Ignoring the data that came out in public he said, ‘those details are no state secret’. He has mocked the person who leaked his address saying that try to find his new one.

The TRAI chief was trying to debunk the theory that Aadhar compromises the privacy of the people. Even after many of his sensitive details have come out, he kept on saying he didn’t challenge them for phone number and other information.

All these happened just after Justice Srikrishna committee proposed new safeguards to protect information of Aadhar holders.