IT Ministry Probing CoWIN Vaccination 'Data Leak': Reports

The IT Ministry is said to be probing the alleged CoWin data leak wherein a Telegram account was reportedly found sharing personal information of high-profile politicians from across political parties.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is said to be probing the alleged Covid-19 vaccination data leak issue. A Telegram account was reportedly found sharing personal information of high-profile politicians from across political parties, media personalities, and senior bureaucrats, apart from regular CoWin-registered users due to an alleged data leak. Saket Gokhale, national spokesperson of the Trinamool Congress, on Monday, claimed that the bot allegedly revealed personal information of Rajya Sabha MPs Sanjay Raut and Derek O’Brien, former Union Minister P Chidambaram, Congress MPs Jairam Ramesh and KC Venugopal among others.

"It is old data, we are still verifying it. We have sought a report regarding the same," news agency ANI reported sources in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology as stating.

Indian Express also reported that the Ministry has taken cognisance of the issue. “We have certainly taken cognisance of the issue and have initiated a probe into the root cause and whether the data is coming from CoWIN or some other source,” a senior official from the Electronics and IT Ministry told The Indian Express, as per its report.

The alleged leak could affect over 100 core individuals who have registered on the CoWIN portal to get vaccinated against Covid-19 and to download their vaccination certificates. The users include more than 4 crore children between the age of 12-14 and over 37 crore people over the age of 45.

According to TMC leader Saket Gokhale, the Telegram bot showed the name of the person, the government ID they used while getting the vaccination, and where they got inoculated. In fact, the bot was also able to reveal all the people that were registered to CoWIN through the same phone number as the portal allows for one person to create multiple accounts using the same phone number.

The Telegram account has been inactive since Monday morning, according to the IE report. “Aadhaar and number search mode is not available right now,”  the message on a corresponding group reads, as per the report.