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Tamil Nadu’s Makkal Number exposed in massive data breach, bringing into question its privacy implications and legality

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The data breach casts serious doubts on the unique ID's crucial role in Tamil Nadu's State Family Database. Tamil Nadu's Makkal Number, a unique ID that's being used to tie together all the digital records of citizens of the state, has been exposed in a massive data breach. This brings into question the privacy implications and legality of such an identification number. What is Makkal Number? Makkal Number (people's number) is a unique number that the Government of Tamil Nadu has already allotted to nearly 7 crore citizens of the state and is used by the government for consolidating records in the backend. Contrary to the name, Makkal Number is an 8-digit alphabetic code. And unlike Aadhaar, Makkal Number is not necessarily known to the citizen. It is already live and is being used to dole out some welfare benefits and is connected to many records including the birth and death records of citizens. Makkal Number is also the core element tying together records in Tamil Nadu's upcoming State Family Database (SFDB). What is the State Family Database (SFDB)? SFDB is an all-in-one database that will be used across different departments of the state government to maintain records of various kinds. For example, SFDB can be used by the Department of Revenue to maintain land records pertaining to a citizen and by the Department of Higher Education to maintain education records of the same citizen. The government has described SFDB as the single source of truth on all details with respect to the state’s residents and the…

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