When you get an Aadhaar card, you also provide your fingerprint and retina scan data to the government. This is called biometric data. Your biometric data can be used for Aadhaar verification, which means that (for example) when you submit your Aadhaar card as proof of identity to get a SIM card, you can use your fingerprint to allow telecom companies to access your identity information. By doing so, it can quickly verify IDs, speed up operations such as KYC verification.
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However, in some cases, people have claimed that Aadhaar biometric authentication is being misused. People who have not used their Aadhaar cards for some time have received emails from UIDAI stating that their data has been accessed through biometric authentication. This is obviously quite shocking.
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All this can be avoided if you lock the biometric information stored on the UIDAI server. This means no one else can access the biometric data – you can unlock it when you need to use it for verification, and then lock it again.
How to check Aadhaar card status online
Here’s how to lock and unlock your Aadhar UIDAI biometric information:
- Open the UIDAI website.
- Enter your 12-digit Aadhaar number.
- Enter the security code shown on the image below the Aadhaar number.
- Click Generate one-time password.
- A one-time password will be sent via SMS to your registered phone number. Enter the OTP on the same page.
- Click Verify.
- Check now Enable biometric lock.
- Next, click enable After checking Enable Biometric Lock.
- If you want to disable the lock, uncheck Enable biometric lock and click Disable.
This will lock/unlock your Aadhar UIDAI biometric information. The above steps also tell you how to unlock it if needed.
How to download a copy of Aadhaar card
Note that locking biometric data means that you can only authenticate Aadhaar-based transactions or information requests through an OTP sent to your mobile number and not through a thumb or iris scan.
For more tutorials, visit our how-to section.
