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."

Comments

Re:Indian, Pakistani, Ukrainian, Nigerian

[griffm]

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.

Whoe's responsible?

[cpn2000]

I think a good deterrant to these things would be to make the company who owns this data take responsibility if it gets in the wrong hands. While this does not solve the problem, companies will be more wary of who they do business with if their neck is on the line, it wont simply be a question of awarding work to the lowest bidder.
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.
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 ... i.e you are essentially at their mercy.

Re:I don't get it

[cthulhuology]

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.

Re:I don't get it

[WIAKywbfatw]

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.