Central government takes action, blocks websites showing Aadhaar and PAN data

New Delhi: The central government has blocked some websites showing sensitive personal information such as Aadhaar and PAN data. The IT Ministry was informed that sensitive information of citizens is being made public by some portals. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the government agency issuing Aadhaar, has filed a case with the police administration under Section 29 (4) of the Aadhaar Act 2016 for publicly displaying Aadhaar information.

According to the information given by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, these websites have been analysed by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN), in which some shortcomings were found in the security of these websites. The owners of these websites were also provided guidance about the actions to be taken at their level to improve the ICT infrastructure and fix the vulnerabilities. Guidance has been issued by Indian cyber agencies for all institutions to use IT applications. Guidelines on information security practices, procedures, prevention, response and reporting of cyber incidents have been issued by CERT-IN under the Information Technology Act 2000 (IT Act).