Indian call centers accused of selling callers' credit card, medical info

Some 500,000 British nationals who have dealt with call centers may have had their confidential data - like credit card and medical records - sold to criminals and marketing firms, a UK news site reported.

 

UK's Daily Mail said an undercover investigation showed corrupt Indian call center workers have been engaging in this practice, with records selling for as little as two pence.

 

It quoted two "consultants" claiming to be IT workers at several call centers, met undercover reporters from The Sunday Times and boasted of having 45 different sets of personal information on nearly 500,000 Britons.

 

"Data included names, addresses, and phone numbers of credit card holders, start and expiry dates as well as the three-digit security verification codes," the report said.

 

The information, which includes data of customers of major companies like HSBC and NatWest, are a veritable gold mine for criminals and fraudsters, it added.

 

About 330,000 people are employed in India's call centers, in an industry worth around £3.2 billion a year, the report said.

 

Many British companies have outsourced services to the India, although a public backlash over the use of foreign workers has seen some withdrawn.

 

Even Spanish bank Santander, which owns Abbey, announced last year it would no longer use Indian call centres.

 

Banking data stolen

 

The Daily Mail quoted IT consultant Naresh Singh, who met the undercover reporters in a hotel room in Gurgaon - a town near Delhi - as saying data from institutions like Barclays, Halifax, and Lloyds TSB "had been sold to somebody already."

 

"We’ve been dealing so long we can tell the bank by just the card number," Singh said.

 

He said that much of the data would be less than 72 hours old.

 

Other information being hawked around by unscrupulous workers included sensitive material about mortgages, loans, insurance, mobile phone contracts, Sky Television subscriptions.

 

The data would enable direct marketing companies to target customers more effectively.

 

Combating corruption

 

Indian authorities say their efforts to combat corruption have been hampered by the unwillingness of companies, keen to avoid negative publicity, reporting data losses.

 

The government is now being called on to take action against widespread reports of data insecurity.

 

Conservative member of the Commons’ public accounts select committee, Richard Bacon, said this was not only a matter for the organizations involved but also the authorities.

 

He called on the British Government to investigate the latest allegations. —TJD, GMA News