Sunil Dhawan reports:
There was news doing the rounds earlier on in the day that Aadhaar data of subscribers of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has been stolen by hackers.
On social media, there was secret letter alegedly written by VP Joy, the Central Provident Fund Commissioner, on March 23 confirming that such a theft has taken place.
However, about two hours ago, the EPFO through its official social media handles put out a statement regarding ‘certain falsehoods being circulated in the social media platform about EPFO data’. The release clarified that such “warnings regarding the vulnerabilities data or software is a routine administrative process based on which services rendered through common service areas have been discontinued effective 22nd March 2018.”
Read more on Economic Times.
Well, that sounds somewhat reassuring. Except for the fact that it is contradicted by other statements and information. Read Aman Sethi’s report for Bloomberg on Huffington Post. That report makes it sound like there was some data security leak or incident. Hopefully, they’ll get some clarification and followup.