What Privacy? Voter ID Lists in India Publicly Available for Anyone to Access

India is slowly heading towards being a digital-start land, and while we may have made progress in some initiatives, cybersecurity remains a weak point when it comes to digitizing India.

It was previously reported how hundreds of govt. websites may have leaked the denizen's Aadhar card'due south data. At present, another issue that has come up is the fact that the details of practically every person in Bharat with a voter ID are publicly available.

As kickoff discovered past Baptiste Robert aka Elliot Anderson, a French security researcher, the voter lists in India have been made public for anyone to view. The Election Commissions of various states have released PDFs and other documentscontaining data about the voter'due south proper noun, father'due south name, age, sex, address, and the voter ID.

In #Bharat, the voter lists are public. Election commissions release pdfs with proper noun, male parent's proper noun, historic period, sex, address, voter id. Due to "poor" security practices by @CeodelhiOffice, it's possible to assemble all the Delhi voters data in one database. pic.twitter.com/c7DV2wMqh7

— Baptiste Robert (@fs0c131y) February 11, 2018

Having personally checked this, nosotros can ostend that the in a higher place claim is indeed truthful. For instance, if you caput over to Uttar Pradesh's Country Ballot Commission website, yous'll be required to enter a few details about the constituency for which you're trying to get the voter data. And with no say-so, you will be given access to a PDF file that contains the data of all the voters in that specific region. Same is the case with Maharashtra and other states' Ballot Commission websites also.

Further, Robert explains that the process is a little different when it comes to the state of Delhi. While the data cannot be viewed in bulk, it is however public. Equally shown by the video in his tweet, he was able to obtain the voter ID details dump by running a script.

On being DM'ed on Twitter, Robert told Beebom he created an Android awarding which brute forces all the possible voter ID. A voter ID is made up of a 3 letter prefix, followed by a 7 digit number.

A voter ID is a three alphabetic character prefix + 7 digits number. Thanks to a non-protected endpoint you can effort all the possible combinations and it will render all the records found.

Y'all can also try this for yourself past heading over to Delhi's Election Committee website. All you accept to do is simply enter a random voter ID in the same format, enter the captcha lawmaking, and you lot can view the details of the person to whom that ID corresponds to. Alternatively, if you know someone's personal details, such as proper name and father/mother/spouse's name, you lot tin enter them here and go details most their address and more.

As such, nosotros feel this is a serious issue that needs to exist sorted. Making personal details such every bit one'south address bachelor online is a breach of privacy, something that is certainly not upstanding. Usa' Election Commissions take basically given everyone the ability to access anyone'due south personal data, as is axiomatic from one of the replies to Robert's tweet.

https://twitter.com/TheNaveenReddy/status/962729600122961921

Unfortunately, there's nothing you tin can do about information technology. We urge the Election Commissions to take adequate steps regarding this, enforcing necessary security measures to protect the citizen's private details from the public center.

Tell us what you think of it, and what measures should the government take regarding this thing in the comments downward beneath.

Source: https://beebom.com/privacy-voter-id-lists-india-publicly-available/

Posted by: tilleyfrorcut.blogspot.com

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