Centre denies reports claiming CoWIN data breach

New Delhi: The Centre on Friday dismissed reports of data leak from the Co-WIN application and assured the platform neither collects the address of people nor RT-PCR test results for vaccination.

The Union Health Ministry in a tweet on Friday said, "Regarding data leak from Co-WIN: We are getting the matter examined. However, prima facie it appears that the alleged leak is not related to Co-WIN as we neither collect any information on address or the COVID-19 status of beneficiaries."

Further, the Ministry in a press release informed, "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 Co-WIN portal and the entire data of residents is safe and secure on this digital platform."

"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," the release further read.

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.