DO OCI Registration At your own risk

[SanjayGupta]

This is an FYI for all those planning to register for OCI.
The Ministry of Home Affairs web site asks you to fill in the Part-A FORM
(at http://ociindia.nic.in/ociindia/Onli...strationG.jsp).

Some of the critical piece of information they ask is your:

- Date of Birth
- Mother's Name
- Passport no.

etc.
All of the above including everything you fill in is transmitted to MHA web site
'UNSECURED' as our ministry is too poor to afford the cost of a few dollars (or Rupees) for installing a digital certificate for transmitting your information encrypted. For tech savvy folks...this is SSL which our ministry wisely chose not to implement.

Maybe the web site was developed by the relatives of officials who charged the taxpayers tons of money. (Hey....It could happen... )

If you are living especially in the US and have been paying attention to 'Identity Theft' news that have resulted in huge financial losses and the pain in dealing with 'undoing' your identity theft..then you know why I am concerned.

I am not trying to scare folks...but all I am trying to say is 'DO IT AT YOUR OWN RISK' as anybody can easily capture all your info and.....

I had written to various folks (by email) at MHA about six months or so ago and they had promised to fix this....Well folks this is India...maybe it will happen in the next century

I am writing it here with the hope that there is a one in a million chance that some one else will raise this issue or maybe someone else has some connections in MHA etc. to help the cause.

Cheers

Sanjay

[immihelp]

Thanks for the info.

Sounds scary.