Centre denies reports claiming Co-Win data leak; Says 'digital platform is safe & secure'

After reports claiming that the data stored in the Co-Win portal has been leaked emerged, the government on Friday clarified that there has been no data leak but it stated that it will get the matter examined. It added that the alleged leak is not related to CoWin as it neither collects any information on the address or COVID-19 status of beneficiaries.

"There have been several media reports claiming that the data stored in Co-Win portal has been leaked online. It is clarified that no data has leaked from the Co-Win portal and the entire data of residents is safe and secure on this digital platform," Government said.

It added, "It is also clarified that while Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare will enquire into the substance of the news, prima facie the assertion is not correct, as Co-Win collects neither the address of the person nor the RT-PCR test results for COVID-19 vaccination."

A report in news agency PTI claimed that the personal data of thousands of people in India leaked from a government server which includes their mobile number, name, address and COVID test result. It alleged that the data has been put on sale on Raid Forums.

Rajshekhar Rajaharia, a Cyber Security researcher,  also tweeted that personally identifiable information (PII) including name and Covid-19 results are made public through a content delivery network (CDN). He said that Google has indexed lakhs of data from the affected system.

"PII including Name, MOB, PAN, Address etc of #Covid19 #RTPCR results & #Cowin data getting public through a Govt CDN. #Google indexed almost 9 Lac public/private #GovtDocuments in search engines. Patient's data is now listed on #DarkWeb. Need fast deindex," Rajaharia said in his tweet. 

Meanwhile, the government has refuted the claims and said that there is no data leak.