After PAN card, your Facebook account to get linked with Aadhaar card?

The year 2017 has been a very crucial year as the Aadhar card became the most important identity for a person's identification. The governement asked the citizens to get their bank accounts, PAN card and mobile numbers linked to their Aadhar card but now it seems your Facebook account too will use your identification card for privacy concern and to recognise you.

The social media giant, Facebook, has started to test the usage of Aadhar card to encourage new users to submit their real names as on their identification card. The news was confirmed by a Facebook spokesperson during an interview given to the leading portal indianexpress.com. However, it is not compulsory for the users to do the same as they can also opt to ignore the promt if they want to.

In a statement given by the spokesperson, he said, “We want to make sure people can use the names they’re known by on Facebook, and can easily connect with friends and family. This is a small test where we provide additional language when people sign up for an account to say that using the name on their Aadhaar card makes it easier for friends to recognize them. This is an optional prompt which we are testing, people are not required to enter the name on their Aadhaar card.”

The prompt was first recognized by a Reddit user who uploaded a screenshot of the same in which the Facebook's mobile website asked for the name of the user as per their Aadhar Card. The prompt read as, "What's your name? Using the name on your Aadhaar card makes it easier for friends to recognise you.”

It is to be noticed that Facebook is not the first agency to ask for the details of the Aadhar card as a few weeks back, the online retailer Amazon too asked its customers to submit their Aadhaar numbers so that they can track the lost packages. Not only this, Zoomcar, a car rental platform based in Bengaluru too asked customers to submit the Aadhar card details for booking the car.

The social media platform, Facebook is one of the biggest networking platforms over the globe and has an active users of over 201 million in India.