Barely two days ago, TRAI Chairman Ram Sewak Sharma revealed his Aadhaar number on Twitter and threw an open challenge asking people to prove how someone can be harmed using just this piece of information.
Soon enough, the whole challenged snowballed into a full-fledged agenda on Twitter to prove Sharma wrong. Within an hour, someone revealed his personal details and soon after that ₹1 was deposited in the bank account of TRAI chief via Aadhaar-enabled payment service.
The ethical hackers, who fetched Sharma’s bank account details using his Aadhaar number, also posted a screenshot of the transaction on Twitter.
Now, much to Sharma’s and TRAI’s embarrassment, UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India)- the mandated organisation that issues the 12-digit Aadhaar number to Indian citizens- has issued an advisory via a series of tweets, warning people to refrain from using their Aadhaar number on social media.
As it was bound to happen, Twitter erupted in laughter and why not!
Now, this is called learning your lesson the hard way.