The Unique Identification Authority of India on Sunday said that all Aadhaar data is fully protected and completely safe. The government has dismissed all allegations that there have been information breaches and that biometric data has been misused. “Aadhaar in any manner whatsoever and personal data of individuals held by UIDAI is fully safe and secure,” India Today reported UIDAI as saying.

“UIDAI uses one of world’s most advanced encryption technologies in transmission and storage of data. As a result, during the last 7 seven years, there has been no report of breach or leak of residents’ data out of UIDAI,” it said. It also added that there have been no cases of identity or financial though more than 400 crore Aadhaar-authenticated transactions have taken place in the past five years. Moreover, subsidy transfers linked to Aadhaar has helped save Rs 49,000 crore in the past two-and-half years, UIDAI said.

Their statement comes after several reports of websites and databases leaking personal information collected by Aadhaar card holders. In response to a right to information application filed by Scroll.in last year, the UIDAI refused to share data on how many security breaches, intrusion attempts or security incidents it had detected or been notified of. It denied this information for both its Central Identities Data Repository, where it stores all core biometric information, as well as for the other databases it maintains.