50 Million Turkish Citizens Leak Raises Doubts of Aadhar System's Security Personal data of 50 million Turkish citizens leaked online – could the Aadhar System also fall victim next?
By Rustam Singh
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Showcasing how vulnerable and delicate data online can be, the very personal details of nearly 50 Million Turkish citizens, including the country's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have been compromised and posted online in a massive security breach. The move is completed uncalled for an unprovoked – and completely appear to be demonstrated to showcase how unsafe their security servers really were.
The database contains 49,611,709 records, appeared on the website of an Icelandic hacking group on Monday, offering download links to anyone interested. The Associated Press has confirmed the leaks of more than half of the population to be genuine, including their names, addresses, parents' first names, cities of birth, birth dates, and a national identifier number used by the Turkish government.
Although the government has tried to downsize the hack, it raises serious doubts of risk of identity theft as well as fraud. Anyone can easily impersonate millions of the citizens and also raises the level of trust people have on the government. The hackers also taunted the government for its religious fundamentalism and mocked Donald Trump warning American citizens that voting him in power would be a stupid decision.
This level of a massive security breach also raises questions over the safety details of the similar system used in India, namely the Aadhar System. The AADHAR system has attracted thousands of critics over its safety, efficiency and need. More than 50 crore citizens are now registered on the AAdhar system and this raises serious doubts over the safety with which data is stored. This includes private details of their retina scans, fingerprints, signatures, addresses, full names and other biometric stats. As with any massive collection of citizen data, it is merely a time game until which someone find a bug and hacks the servers.
What do you think? Is a massive collection of citizen's private data a wise idea or does it raise serious risks of hacks? Let us know in the comments on our official Facebook page Entrepreneur India
