"Digital identities of more than a million citizens have been compromised by a programming error on a website maintained by the Jharkhand Directorate of Social Security.
The glitch revealed the names, addresses, Aadhaar numbers and bank account details of the beneficiaries of Jharkhand’s old age pension scheme.
Jharkhand has over 1.6 million pensioners, 1.4 million of whom have seeded their bank accounts with their Aadhaar numbers to avail of direct bank transfers for their monthly pensions.
Their personal details are now freely available to anyone who logs onto the website, a major privacy breach at a time when the Supreme Court, cyber-security experts and opposition politicians have questioned a government policy to make Aadhaar mandatory to get benefits of a variety of government schemes and services..."