Real Virtual IDentification (RVID): Providing a Virtual, Secure and Anonymous ID Service to Indian Users

Abstract

Today using (sharing) Aadhaar with several welfare schemes/organisations, provide several essential benefits (to get government schemes benefits) to Indian citizens. But on the other hand, revealing/sharing their Aadhaar number with government and organisation raised several issues like security and revealing of personal information of the user. For that the government makes several enhancements from time to time like recently, government forces and give an option to use virtual IDs irrespective of using Aadhaar number. But virtual ID is not fixed and a user can generate multiple VIDs, it means it is a confusing process to user/people belonging to rural area. So to solve this issue of VID, this work describes a novel approach to provide a secure and anonymous (yet transparent and immutable) identification management system, which provide a Real Virtual ID (RVID) with respect to every user’s Aadhaar number. This ID (16-digit ID, i.e. containing combination characters and letters) can be used to take several benefits or can be used irrespective of sharing Aadhaar number with organisations. A prototype shows that such ID management system is feasible, and solves the problem of duplication of data. It is also immune to many ID attacks like guessing attack, etc.