Just days after TRAI Chairman RS Sharma got the social media in a frenzy by sharing his Aadhaar number on Twitter and challenged people to “harm him”, the Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) which runs the Aadhaar project found itself being questioned on the social media on Thursday again. This time, it was due to the revelation that the UIDAI’s helpline number is pre-stored on most Android-based phones.
The issue gained prominence when French hacker Elliot Alderson asked people on Twitter if they have the UIDAI helpline number on their contact list. In hours, hundreds of people posted screenshots and confirmed that it is indeed the case for Android phones as citizens questioned the protocol through which the UIDAI number got in their phonebooks without their explicit consent.
“Many people, with different provider, with and without an #Aadhaar card, with and without the mAadhaar app installed, noticed that your phone number is predefined in their contact list by default and so without their knowledge. Can you explain why?” Alderson tweeted, tagging the official UIDAI handle.
Alderson had earlier pointed out that having the UIDAI helpline number (1800-300-1947) could just be “the tip of the iceberg”, hinting that there could be additional data or trackers on Indian phone manufacturers’ devices.
While it could not be independently confirmed with the phone manufacturers as to how the contact got into people’s phones, Business Standard reviewed handsets from Motorola, OnePlus, Samsung and Nokia which had the same number automatically in the phone books.
On Twitter, people raised this concern with the authority and asked how the number got into their phones.
“Why is this on my phone? I don't even have an #Aadhaar,” tweeted a user Rachita (@visualfumble). who claimed she doesn’t even have an Aadhaar number.
Meanwhile, the UIDAI didn’t respond to Business Standard’s queries sent over email and text messages. A highly placed source in the authority, however, said that there has been no communication from the UIDAI in this regard and the phone manufacturers must have found the helpline number to be as useful as the emergency number so they decided to put it in.
That, however, is unlikely to be true as many other important numbers such as women helpline and fire emergency are not added automatically, said Arnav Gupta, co-founder at Coding Blocks who has earlier worked at Micromax developing handsets.
“Every Android phone tries to connect to the internet and as soon as it connects, it downloads a basic list of emergency contact of each country. In India, it is distress number 112 and the UIDAI helpline,” Gupta said.
He explained that the government would have had to issue some guidelines in this regard to phone manufacturers to download this specific number even as some operators seem to be loading the UIDAI helpline in the SIM card as well.
“I tested it with various countries’ virtual private networks and the numbers change in every country. A phone company is not the one making decisions as to what to load and what not to. Samsung devices, for instance, come with UIDAI number out of the box and so do Airtel and Vodafone SIM cards in some cases,” Gupta added.
Meanwhile, the source from the authority added that 1800-300-1947 is actually an old number that doesn’t work. The new helpline is 1947.