CoWin to block users for searching Covid-19 vaccine slots, 50 OTPs generation in 24 hours; How to unblock?

New Delhi, June 10: Government of India's COVID-19 vaccine registration website CO-WIN will start blocking users for a day who search for COVID-19 vaccination slots over 1,000 times or generate more than 50 OTPs within 24 hours time.

An official told Times of India in a report that those who will be blocked for breaching this limit will only be blocked for 24 hours.

"The idea is to ensure those booking slots manually do not end up competing with bots," the official told the publication.

According to reports, the system will also log out users who make more than 20 search requests within a 15-minute session on Co-WIN.

The website already has an option of public search for available slots on the portal, where users can look for slots without having to log in.

"Users do not need to search 20 or more times within a very short period of time or two pin codes or district in a short span of time raise suspicion of bot activity," he said. Such users are being logged out, he further added.

Further, the official said that users making 20 or more requests within a very short period of time raise suspicion of bot activity.

The ability to book COVID vaccine slots from multiple apps makes it easier for users to search for vaccine slots more frequently since they try on each app in order to secure a slot.

Recently, the government of India introduced a new set of guidelines for Co-WIN that allow third parties to enable registration, scheduling, and management of vaccination through their apps.

This is an update to the existing framework where developers can only offer information on the availability of slots and facilitate download of vaccination certificates via their apps. Before this, government's Aarogya Setu and Umang were the only two apps that allowed users to register and book COVID-19 vaccine appointments apart from Co-WIN.

Earlier, the government also allowed people who are vaccinated to update their status voluntarily on the Aarogya Setu app through a self-assessment process.

How to Unblock Account on CoWIN Portal?

The only options available to unblock CoWIN accounts are to either wait for the issue to resolve by not attempting to log in or generate OTPs for a few hours at least or call 1075.