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Offshored Identity Theft
Travoltus writes "The threat of increased misuse of consumer personal data by offshore criminals was first made publicly known with the UCSF Pakistani medical transcriber scandal. Then, in a logical progression of events, it was discovered that foreign criminal interests were offering money to offshored call center workers to surrender consumer data. Now that threat has been realized: Offshored call center staffers at Mphasis BPO have allegedly stolen £200,000 using United States customers' personal information. It is believed that Indian police reacted swiftly to catch the thieves, but only £12,000 has been recovered so far, and it is not really known who orchestrated this theft or where the rest of that money is now. It is also unknown as of yet how much of a mess this has created for the U.S. citizens who were victimized. Let's hope that the people whose information was stolen don't have to go through what other identity theft victims have to endure, to clean up their good name."
I concur. There are bad people everywhere. However, if the countries which host these offshore efforts do not respond to the criminal activities at least as well as the US (which shouldn't be too hard in my mind) then they will lose the ability to either gain or maintain business. Also, consumer choice may have an effect over the long term (similar to the "look for the union label" or the boycott of manufacturers that use child labor/sweat shops). I have no doubt the absence of offshore labor could become a marketing tool in the near future.
While offshoring of these type of jobs may be inevitable, I would expect companies to be damn sure of what they are doing if they are handing my personal details to a third party, especially one outside the US
While dealing with identity theft happening within the US is bad enough, it would be a nighmare trying to sort this out when it happens overseas. ... i.e you are essentially at their mercy.
This does not mean that people outside the US are any more (or less) dishonest than within. But when you try to track down criminals in another country you are essentially at the mercy of the police in that place, and there may be no way of compelling them to help
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
Identity theft by foreign thieves is scarier because the US legal system and police systems alone aren't sufficient to track them down. International crime has jurisdictional issues, and you have no guarantee that the authorities in whatever country you're dealing with will cooperate, or even have the means to do so. This isn't an "outsourcing is bad because foreigners can't be trusted" problem, it is a "outsourceing is bad because the same rules that protect US customers need not apply". Anything that makes getting away with identity theft easier / harder to prosecute makes the situation worse.
So you think that the Indian authorities would be soft on this sort of crime because the victims aren't Indian citizens? Please.
If anything - and I speak with a great deal of personal knowledge about the country having travelled there many times - they're probably more vigilant about crimes against westerners than they are about crime in general.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
The Washington DC area metro system recently went to electronic cards for paying for using their parking garages. The all of a suddent realized that low paid workers that have large ammounts of money passing through their hands on a daily basis are a bad risk in terms of theft of said money.
Comment maid by other people: "No shit, Sherlock." and "Duh!"
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
It's not about trustworthy people. You will find those anywhere. It's about the people who now have access to our personal data being outside of our Legal and Law enforcement system. In the UK they have a data protection act which restricts personal data from going outside their country. The U.S. would be wise to adopt such a policy. One would think it would be a no brainer these days with our talk of being tough on terrorists. In light of recent news of our borders being porous and our domestic response teams being ill prepared. It really makes me wonder if we are really still that concerned about domestic terrorism.
...and the fact is, we already have so little control over our personal information, that I have to concur with the assertion.
Is it nationalist or racist? I don't know really. I just don't want all of my information out of control. It shouldn't be legal to sell personal information in the first place. "Credit history" and like information has become a very abused business and falls neatly within the predictions of disaster by the people who protested this system decades ago. Has it improved our lives? Our economy? Anything?
It made rich people richer and citizens into 'consumers.'
The question isn't whether identity theft and/or fraud is illegal (though that may be a problem here), but the matter of enforcement as a deterent. Frankly, it's a lot easier to get away with crimes when they cross national borders. Don't steal too much at a time and you'll probably be safe.