Aadhaar is now turning to be one of the most important KYC document. Hence, protecting your privacy from any misuse is also important. Let us see how to lock and unlock Aadhaar Card online and protect from misuse.
You must all know that while obtaining Aadhaar card you provide your biometric information like retinal and fingerprint scan data to the government. These two data are unique to each individual. However, recently there were some news items which claimed that Aadhaar data of many individuals were leaked.
Hence, it is now imperative for an individual to safeguard his interest while sharing Aadhaar card information with anyone. Nowadays many financial institutions like banks or even your SIM provider using the facility called e-KYC or Biometric based e-KYC to validate the proof.

What do you mean by Biometric e-KYC?

When you enroll for Aadhaar, UDAI stores the demographic information such as name, address, date of birth/age, gender, mobile number, email address. Along with this, UDAI also stores biometric information refers to the iris, finger prints and facial photograph of which the fingerprint and iris data is to be used for authentication.

Let us assume you apply for a bank account opening and you provided Aadhaar number for the same. Now, instead of accepting the photocopy of Aadhaar, banks started using “Biometric e-KYC”.You will have to provide your Aadhaar number to the banker (in this example). The concerned banker will enter your Aadhaar number into an Aadhaar-based authentication system. In the next step, in order to access to your KYC details are being granted to the bank under your authorization, you have to authenticate yourself using your fingerprint.
If the fingerprint scanned at the device matches with the one in the Aadhaar database, it is considered to be an approval from you and your KYC details are shared with the Bank. You no need to submit the photocopy of your Aadhaar card.
This is the actually foolproof process and completely eliminated the process of submitting hard copies and may be misused.
Once someone does an e-KYC using your Aadhaar number, then immediately you will receive an email and SMS message to your phone registered with them. The email looks like below.
Even though this eliminated many risks like misuse of your Aadhaar photocopy and foolproof solution, but there are still few instances where your fingerprints itself were copied and misused.

Hence, to provide one more layer of security, UDAI come up with lock and unlock Aadhaar Card online.

How to lock and unlock Aadhaar Card online?

Now you came to know the importance of your biometric information of Aadhaar. To avoid any misuse of your such biometric information, UDAI came up with another layer of security to lock and unlock Aadhaar Card online.
Let us see now the process of how to lock and unlock Aadhaar Card online. Do remember few facts about this service.
# Once you locked Biometrics, then you will not be able to use your Biometrics (fingerprints/iris) for authentications thus preventing potential misuse.
# Lock and unlock Aadhaar Card online ONLY possible. You can’t do it offline.
# You must be registered your mobile number to avail this facility. Because UDAI will send a one-time password to your registered number.
# Once you lock, then you can unlock it only for 10 minutes. After this temporary unlock period, your Aadhaar will be blocked again automatically. This is done for the purpose of protection.
# Do remember that using this facility, you can only protect your Aadhaar who try to access your Aadhaar data using your biometric access.

How to lock Aadhaar Card online?

First, let us see the process of how to lock Aadhaar Card online.
Step 1-Visit the UDAI Aadhaar Biometric Locking link.

Step 2-Enter your 12 digits unique Aadhaar number and the code available next. Then click on Send OTP. UDAI will send OTP to your registered mobile number.
Remember that this OTP will be valid only for 30 minutes. You have to enter this OTP in the space provided for and click on Log in.
Step 3-Then you have to click on the tab “Enable” to lock the Aadhaar biometric by entering the code available side to it. The screen looks like below.

Step 4-Then you will receive the successful message of locked Aadhaar Biometric as below.
This is the process of locking your Aadhaar Biometric online.

How to unlock Aadhaar Card online?

We now understood the process of locking Aadhaar Card online. Now whenever we have to give permission to authenticate our Aadhaar details, then we have to unlock the same.
Do remember that this unlock is temporary. UDAI will lock your Aadhaar automatically after 10 minutes. Hence, each time you want to give permission for someone to authenticate, you have to follow this process.
Step 1-Visit the UDAI Aadhaar Biometric Locking link.

Step 2-Enter your 12 digits unique Aadhaar number and the code available next. Then click on Send OTP. UDAI will send OTP to your registered mobile number.
Remember that this OTP will be valid only for 30 minutes. You have to enter this OTP in the space provided for and click on Log in.
Step 3-Then you have to click on the tab “unlock” to unlock the Aadhaar biometric by entering the code available side to it. The screen looks like below.

Here you notice that you have one more option “Disable”. By clicking this tab, you are completing disabling the locking feature of your Aadhaar Card Biometric data.
Step 4-Then you will receive the successful message of Aadhaar unblocked.

Hope this information is useful to all and activate this facility of lock and unlock Aadhaar Card online and prevent misuse. Do remember that by using this facility you are protecting someone’s unauthentic biometric entry for your Aadhaar data.
However, if share your physical copies with someone or your Aadhaar number with someone, then the risk is always there.