The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has launched the beta version of the virtual ID (VID) feature on Monday.Residents can go to the UIDAI website and generate a VID number. The service providers will soon start accepting the VID number in lieu of the Aadhaar number. The UIDAI has set a deadline of June for the full rollout of VIDs.
Under attack over alleged leakage of resident demographic data and potential profiling of citizens in the future, in January, UIDAI announced the launch of the VID which is one of the most significant security upgrades by the eight-year-old agency.
In a tweet, the UIDAI said on Monday, “UIDAI launches Virtual ID. Generate your VID from Resident.uidai.gov.in/web/resident/vidgeneration. Soon, service providers will start accepting VID in place of Aadhaar number. For now, you can use this for online address update in your Aadhaar from.” (sic)
Once the VID regime is completely rolled out, citizens will have the choice to never disclose their 12-digit Aadhaar number even to government agencies mandated by the law to store the unique identity number such as the Income Tax department.
Citizens can use the VID in lieu of the 12-digit Aadhaar number at the time of authentication for any service, whether government or private.
The citizens will also have the choice for the reverse — which is to not generate their virtual IDs and continue using their Aadhaar numbers each time. The government had set a deadline of June 1 for all authentication agencies to implement the new system.