At least one central government ministry and multiple Indian state government departments currently expose the personal information of thousands of Indian citizens through their websites — information that shouldn’t actually be available so freely. The personal data in question, in some cases, includes names, addresses, date of birth, Aadhaar card numbers, PAN card details, religion and caste.

All of this information, which should be securely and safely stored, is available in the form of Microsoft Excel sheets and can be obtained by a simple Google search. This issue was first ...