When life is in danger, who thinks of data? Something similar happened when registration for the vaccine asked for the identification number, phone number, and DOB kind of information. But a major data breach reported by a Malayalam news website The Fourth says that information of those who received the Covid vaccine was leaked.
This information is available on Telegram and can be received by simply entering the registered phone number used while receiving the vaccine. Some of the reports say that crucial information like a person’s phone number, gender, ID card information, and date of birth was leaked on Telegram. If we talk about the reason behind this data breach expert has to say that the vaccine certificate required citizens to pass security checks including OTP which led to such a huge data leak.
In June 2021 similar allegations were made but the Health Ministry denied any leak of information and wrote on Twitter “CoWIN has state-of-the-art security infrastructure and has never faced a security breach. Data of our citizens on CoWIN is absolutely #safe and #secure. Any news about data leaks from CoWIN holds no merit”
The News Minute has reported the data leak of Telangana’s minister of information and communication technology, Kalvakuntla Taraka Rama Rao (popularly known as KTR), DMK MP (member of Parliament) Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, BJP Tamil Nadu president K Annamalai, Congress MP Karti Chidambaram and former union minister of Health Harsh Vardhan of the BJP.
The Member of Parliament Supriya Sule wrote “The government owes us immediate clarification and must ensure those responsible for this breach are held accountable.” As soon as the reports of the data breach heated up, the environment admin of the Telegram group proceeded to take down the bot that leaked information. And as of now, there is no such telegram bot.
