Data breach: Personal data of Covid vaccine recipients leaked on Telegram

In a major data breach, the information of hundreds of thousands of Indians who received the covid vaccine was leaked on a Telegram channel. According to several reports, crucial information like a person’s phone number, gender, ID card information and date of birth was leaked on Telegram. It could be retrieved from a Telegram bot by entering a person’s name.

According to a report by The Fourth News, a Malayalam news portal, the documents related to the mobile number registered in the CoWin portal are available on the channel. It is also possible to know which vaccine was administered and where it was administered.

The list of people whose data has been leaked includes 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, according to The News Minute.

Sharing the news on her Twitter handle, member of Parliament Supriya Sule said, “The government owes us immediate clarification and must ensure those responsible for this breach are held accountable.”

The Union health ministry had earlier denied the news about the information leak. In June 2021, there were reports that the vaccination data of 150 million Indians had been leaked.

Sharing a screenshot of his alleged data leak on the Telegram bot, MP Karti Chidambaram wrote on Twitter, “In its Digital India frenzy, GoI has woefully ignored citizen privacy. Personal data of every single Indian who got COVID-19 vaccination is publicly available. Including my own data. Who let this happen? Why is GoI sitting on a data protection law? @AshwiniVaishnaw must answer.”

In January last year, the chief executive officer (CEO) of the National Health Authority, RS Sharma, said, “#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”.

Responding to the data breach, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said as reported by news agency ANI, “It is old data, we are still verifying it. We have sought a report regarding the same.”