Aman Rawat reports that a breach I didn’t even know about last year has raised concerns about what tech companies are willing to do in terms of linking their employees’ provident fund (PF) account numbers to their Aadhaar identification number. PF accounts are compulsory, government-managed retirement savings accounts. So if the government requires employees’ Aadhaar numbers and also requires employees have and pay into PF accounts, is the government requiring that the employer must directly link the two identifiers by providing Aadhaar numbers to the PF fund? Rawat reports:
Following a tussle between employees and employers regarding the linking of Aadhaar number with provident fund (PF) accounts, a group of technology and back end companies has turned to the government seeking help on the clarification of norms related to Aadhaar linking with PF accounts.
In March 2018, a data breach through Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) also came to light via a letter circulated on Twitter. The letter titled ‘Secret’, which was addressed to the CEO of Common Service Centre, claimed that hackers exploited vulnerabilities through a government’s online website built to link Aadhar with PF account to steal data. This data breach is expected to have discouraged the employees to provide Aadhaar details to EPFO.
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