PUNE: User accounts carrying out more than 1,000 searches for vaccine slots or those generating over 50 OTPs in 24 hours will now be blocked from CoWIN, a central official with the portal’s management team told TOI on Wednesday.
The users (via their mobile phone numbers) will be blocked for 24 hours.
The system will also log out users who make more than 20 search requests within a 15-minute session.
“If someone is doing more than 20 slot searches in 15 minutes, there could be something fishy.
The idea is to ensure those booking slots do not end competing with bots,” the official said.
He added, “We already have an option of public search for slots on CoWIN without the need to log in.
Users don’t need to search 20 or more times within one or two pincodes or district in a short span of time once logged in.
Doing so raises suspicions of bot activity.” The official said at least 6,000 users, nationwide, have been blocked over the last few days for suspicious activity.
“We are tracking all such users.
If they are found doing this often, they may even be blocked permanently.
We also introduced Terms of Service on CoWIN recently to clarify this,” he said.
After they’re blocked, users will receive calls from CoWIN support to alert them of unusual activity in their accounts.
“Legal action may also be taken as IP addresses are being monitored,” the central official said.
However, there are fears the new security controls could impact citizens repeatedly searching CoWIN for slots, especially those who are due for the second dose.
Chetan Mathapati, a Thane resident, said he has been blocked.
“I wanted my second dose, but I’m not able to log into CoWIN.
Initially, it showed a “Generate OTP Failed” message.
Now, it’s saying, ‘Account is Blocked Due To Exceeding Our Search Limit’.” Mathapati said he ended up generating OTPs over a hundred times in a few hours, after which he was blocked.
“I had to generate OTPs so many times because the system kept logging me out after 20 or more attempts at finding a slot.
So I had to log in multiple times,” he said.
On the CoWIN portal, users need OTPs each time they need to log in.
Pune resident Neeraj Shinde said, “I got my first Covaxin dose early in May.
I need my second shot now.
After multiple tries on CoWIN, the system stopped sending me OTPs.
Fact is, we need to make more than 20 slot searches per session, given the competition.”