BENGALURU: While confirming a lapse on the part of the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) which caused the data of candidates being accessed from the official portal, officials clarified that neither was there a data leak and nor was their official website hacked.
Deeming the website “watertight”, KEA executive director Vikas Kishore Suralkar said a recent security check confirmed this.
Suralkar was responding to media reports that claimed that data was leaked or the KEA’s official website was hacked.
Suralkar said every year students who fill out application forms for the Common Entrance Test (CET), call up the KEA helpline later, to get their details. They do this to ensure the information matches with other forms filled, for example application course preference.
In 2019, Suralkar said the authority’s decision-making body was flooded with numerous calls by students seeking details.
Hence, they decided to put out the students’ information on their website. This information, which did not need any login ID or password, was accessed by a nefarious website, which then started offering the data to agents and middlemen in exchange for monetary returns, Suralkar said.
When the misuse of data was brought to the notice of the KEA, they stopped open access to the portal after these elements accessed the data. Parents of engineering aspirants, who spoke to The New Indian Express, expressed disappointment about the messages they received from agents about seats in reputed colleges.
A parent, whose son received calls from agents, said that the one-week lapse, when the data was freely accessed by websites to sell it to middlemen, still does not explain how this data has been getting out every year for the past five years.
“Even before CET was in existence, my daughter received calls as soon as she received her marks. Data would have been released by the board or the university itself,” said the parent.