Goa govt websites redirect users from Aadhaar link to porn site for several hours

Vigilante hacker Elliot Anderson discovered the porn links on two Goa govt websites, which were disabled several hours later.

File image of an Aadhaar card | Photo: Manisha Mondal | ThePrint

New Delhi: Two websites of the Goa government redirected users to a porn website Wednesday until it was fixed a few hours later. This was highlighted by vigilante hacker Elliot Anderson, who has in the past flagged security concerns regarding Aadhaar data.

On Wednesday afternoon, Anderson posted about the government sites — the Directorate Of Official Language of the Government Of Goa and the Directorate of Education of Government of Goa. On clicking the Aadhaar logo at the bottom of the pages, users were being redirected to a porn website with the URL http://www.aadharcarduidai.in/. About three hours later, by about 4:30pm, the links were disabled.

In July 2018, after data-security concerns were raised, R.S. Sharma, chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, made his Aadhaar number public and challenged people to prove the data was not secure.

Anderson used the identity number to find Sharma’s mobile number, details of his wife and daughter, his date of birth, alternate phone number, personal address and bank account number. The discovery created a furore and critics of Aadhaar said they were worried about how secure their personal information was under Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the Aadhaar regulatory body.

Ban on porn websites

In October 2018, the Narendra Modi-led NDA government directed Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block more than 800 websites which had pornographic content. This followed a Uttarakhand High Court order, which directed ISPs to ban all porn websites and said non-compliance will lead to suspension of internet service licences. Pornhub, whose third largest user base is India, created an alternate site pornhub.net, to get around the ban.

As recently as 30 September, it was reported that most websites made a return in India owing to a loophole in the ban. The crackdown was on .com domain names, which meant porn websites simply changed their domain names to .org and .net. The two global porn portals — Redtube and Pornhub — made a comeback with changed domain names.