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There are many reports about hacking of the biometrics linked with the Aadhaar card. Your view?
When this entire debate on Aadhaar was going on, we were very concerned about it. We raised these questions that biometrics can be hacked and they said, no, it cannot be done and today it is a reality. It has been happening just like five years back we thought Deepfakes cannot happen but very soon that is going to become a part and parcel of your life. In fact, some of the anchors have already started creating Deepfake versions of themselves.
So, what is happening over here is that there is something called AEPS, which is the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System. Now, what exactly is it? Now, if you go to some small villages where there are no ATMs or banks or are at quite a distance, there are micro ATMs or the POS devices, as we call it. They are very small. You just need to give your fingerprint over there, authenticate yourself and you will be given the money. Now, the money that is given is just Rs 10,000. Of course, you can withdraw more but the maximum limit is Rs 10,000 at one time and Rs 50,000 in the day, which means five times you can do this.
So what you need here is the Aadhaar number. You need your fingerprints and need to know in which bank your account is. So these are the three things. Now, with that, you just go to the guy and he gets the POS device or the micro ATM. You just give your fingerprint and that is it. He gives you Rs 10,000. You do not really have to walk several kilometres to get money and all that. But now there has been a sudden misuse of it. This has been happening since a year or two but there is a sudden spike right now. The spike is basically because of the theft of our fingerprints. So from where are these thefts done?
Let us say you rented out a house, so you had to go for the registration. So you went for the property registration, the rental registration or you bought a property and then again, or you did a EKYC for your SIM or for the bank account. There again, we leave behind our fingerprints. So what these guys do is with a very high resolution camera, they take the photograph of the prints from the land registry record, or they will just pick that up and do a colour photocopy. They will just make rubber moulds or silicon thumbs, as we call it, wherein these fingerprints are transferred to the silicon sheet. Then a thumb is created and that is how they have your fingerprint.
These are all sold in far off locations, specifically, like if I will tell you if there have been cases in the remote areas of Karnataka and Maharashtra, sorry, in Bihar and many other places. A lot of arrests have happened and a large amount has been swindled. Once they get these moulds, they know the Aadhaar number, they know the bank.
It is kind of a kit that is sold by one cyber criminal to another. That's it. They just start withdrawing and you would not even come to know about it unless you get an OTP and all those kind of things, but Rs 10,000 will be gone. But many people, just don’t bother about it. It is only when you go to your bank you will come to know that this money went in batches of Rs 10,000 to some remote place.
A lot of time people would not know that their biometric is actually being cloned. Okay. How can one be careful and safeguard it? We really need a very robust infrastructure to ensure this, but from a user point of view, how can one ensure this?
From a user point of view, there is nothing much you can do except for locking your biometrics. I think that is something that every citizen of the country needs to do because somewhere or the other, the fingerprints can be stolen . With a little bit of social engineering, Aadhaar can be like my bank account and it would not be a big task for anyone to find out.
Like I can easily find out your bank account. I mean, in which branch and all; I can actually find out what your Aadhaar number is and all I need is your fingerprints. So imagine me just coming to your studio. You had a glass of water. What if I just pick up the fingerprints from there? The kits are also so small, it is easy to lift fingerprints also. So what is important is that even if it is cloned and somebody tries to attempt it, it would not go through if your biometrics are locked. So it is extremely important that every citizen of the country locks their biometric.
The other thing that they need to do is just get rid of the old cards that you have, where you have printed the Aadhaar ones, if they are not with the virtual ID. We have a 16 digit virtual ID and you can just download that also. There is another way. What you can also do is frequently go and check on the UIDAI website. If your biometrics have been attempted from any place, there is authentication history on that particular website. Once in a while you must go and check it out. If I have to go to the land registry, I just have to give my thumbprint. It is on their roster. It is in their big register from there. I just clean my fingerprints and I move out. Now it becomes the responsibility of that organisation to safeguard my biometrics. Well, but if you go to a shop and let us say you just need a SIM and or in your bank they want you to do a kind of a KYC. The least one can do is after getting with it just take a tissue paper, ask for a tissue and just rub the fingerprints out from there.
Now the question rises that if you have been a victim of this particular scam, what all can you do? What is the damage control procedure?
The RBI guidelines clearly say, if you have not shared anything, if you have not been careless, you will have to report something like this in three working days with the bank and the bank is supposed to refund you the entire money. Here what is extremely important is to inform the bank that something like this has happened because somewhere in your statement, it might show up in AEPS and you will be able to see 10,000, 10,000, 10,000 going out because that is what they would attempt to withdraw, the maximum amount and so that needs to be done. It is best to freeze your account for a few days till the investigation is going on because we need to be extremely careful that no more money should go.
But the first step would be to lock your biometrics. The second step would be to go to the bank and block the account and raise the complaint. We do not want three days to go away. The third is to call up 1930 and also lodge a complaint on the national cybercrime reporting portal which is www.cybercrime.gov.in.
How do you lock your biometric?
You just need to either download the app mAadhaar and there is a provision over there in the app itself to lock the biometric. The second is what I personally prefer because it is simpler. Go to the UIDA website and get into my myAadhaar. And over there, there is a particular option about myAadhaar and lock biometrics. That is where you just go and lock it. It will ask you for your Aadhaar number. You put that, you get your OTP, just submit the OTP and then it will tell you whether you want to enable the lock-in or you want to disable the lock-in as such. So you of course enable the lock which means you lock your biometrics. It is as simple as that.
In future, whenever you think you want to use biometrics at some particular base, simply go to the website and unlock it. There are three things you must do. One, lock your biometrics. Second, download an Aadhaar with the virtual ID and start using that number. And the third is to check your authentication history. Have there been moments where somebody has been trying to get into your Aadhaar? These are the three things I think one must do frequently.
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