Amid the rising concern over outdated Aadhaar helpline number being pre-stored without user consent on certain mobile phones, the UIDAI on Sunday said that “vested interests” tried to misuse Google’s inadvertent act for fear-mongering against Aadhaar.
Clarifying that a helpline number cannot steal data from a user’s phone, the UIDAI further suggested phone users not to panic and replace the outdated helpline number with the new number 1947 if they wished to.
The UIDAI’s statement comes a day after the Google apologised for “inadvertently” loading the outdated Aadhaar number in the contact lists of Android phones.
“Our internal review has revealed that in 2014, the then UIDAI helpline number and the 112 distress helpline number were inadvertently coded into the setup wizard of the Android release given to OEMs (Original equipment manufacturers) for use in India and has remained there since.
“Since the numbers get listed on a user’s contact list these get transferred accordingly to the contacts on any new device,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
Google apologised for the same and said the numbers can be manually deleted from the phones. It also promised to fix the same in future editions of its setup wizard.
“We are sorry for any concern that this might have caused, and would like to assure everyone that this is not a situation of an unauthorised access of their Android devices. Users can manually delete the number from their devices,” the statement added.
The UIDAI said rumours being spread on social media to delete helpline number are “totally false propaganda and is nothing but scare-mongering against Aadhaar by vested interests trying to exploit Google’s act to spread misinformation about Aadhaar by scaring people.”
The Aadhaar custodian said that it expects Google, a large digital platform provider, will look into the matter which caused confusion in the minds of people against “India’s credible identity system and will exercise due care so that such things are not repeated in future.”
The UIDAI said that rumours about Aadhaar database being breached are completely false and baseless and are rejected with all condemnation that it deserves.
“UIDAI assures that Aadhaar data remains fully safe and secure. Therefore, people should stay away from such rumours and malicious campaign by vested interests. They should also not waste their time and time of their near and dear ones by forwarding or circulating such false and baseless rumours on their WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook , etc” the statement said.
It further said that Aadhaar has caused tremendous benefits to our country and helped saved more Rs 90,000 crore by preventing leakage and siphoning of benefits and subsidies meant for poor.
“It (Aadhaar) has empowered 121 crore people of India with a credible and secure identity which can be freely used anywhere, anytime and online. People are able to get their rightful entitlement directly into their bank accounts without any middlemen,” the statement said.
It has also helped curb tax evasion, money launderers, benami accounts and shell companies, it added.
The appearance of the number on smartphones had caused a social media furore, as users expressed concerns over how the helpline number had snuck into their smartphone contact list. #UIDAI was trending on the micro-blogging site as the Twitterati sought to unravel the mystery, and questioned the “breach of privacy”.
A French security expert who goes under the pseudonym Elliot Alderson and describes himself as “worst nightmare” of the UIDAI had tweeted, “Hi @UIDAI, Many people, with different provider, with and without an #Aadhaar card, with and without the mAadhaar app installed, noticed that your phone number is predefined in their contact list by default and so without their knowledge. Can you explain why?”
The UIDAI controversy, second in the last one week, comes at a time and the Supreme Court has reserved its judgement on a clutch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of Aadhaar Act. There are also heightened concerns over personal information being allegedly compromised in some instances with increasing use of biometric identifier Aadhaar in an array of services.
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