Aadhaar collects basic data, not income, health and caste details: UIDAI

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has claimed that Aadhaar only collects basic data such as name, date of birth, gender, address, not personal sensitive information such as income, health, class and caste details.

UIDAI does not have your information about bank accounts, shares, mutual funds, financial and property details, health records, family, caste, religion, and education etc. and will never have this information in its database, UIDAI authority was quoted as saying by PTI report.

Using advanced technologies, Aadhaar provides secure banking and prevent beneficiaries from account hacking.  The linking of Aadhaar to bank accounts would also help weed out accounts being operated by fraudsters, criminals, and money launderers.

The 12 digit unique identity does not make it possible for someone to hack an account, said the Aadhaar-issuing body. The biometric identifier helps weed out numbers that are being operated by fraudsters.

"It has been found that most criminals and terrorists get SIM cards issued under the fictitious name and even real people without their knowledge and use them in committing frauds and crime,” said UIDAI.

It also added that Aadhaar Act prohibits UIDAI from collecting or maintaining any information beyond the identity of the individual.

However, earlier in January, several news reports had suggested that Aadhaar data was at risk, as it is shared details of beneficiaries with telecom service providers, banks and insurance companies, amongst others.

Also Read: Encounter Aadhaar authentication failure? No worries, UIDAI now adds your face

Recently, UIDAI allowed facial recognition as an additional means of Aadhaar authentication. It also enables easy authentication for those individuals, who face a difficulty in other biometric authentication due to worn out fingerprint.

In January, it introduced 16-digit Virtual ID after one of the national newspapers The Tribune reported data breach privacy concern. The report had revealed the easy access to Aadhaar details such as name, address, postal code (PIN), photo, phone number and email.