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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."
Why is identity theft by foreigners considered more scary that identity theft by Americans. I'd bet you $100 that the vast, vast, vast majority of credit card fraud on Americans is committed by their fellow countrymen[0].
[0] Or women.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The worst part about stuff like this is that the system is set up in favor of the person stealing the information. There are what seems to be very few safeguards to prevent the theft of someone's information. However, when it's time to clean up the mess, those responsible for it, including companies that were mishandling the information, are nowhere to be found. Thus leaving the victim to spend excessive amounts of time and money clearing their "good" name. Just proves the only person watching out for you is yourself, so be careful who you trust.
it probably isn't the first, I recall seeing similar thing before couple of times. Usually though at least people have the courtesy to not copypaste directly.
anyways.. this is proof of that you could do a slashdot karma-collecting machine quite easily, you would look for similar words in the story text and then automatically repost comments from previous stories that seem like they could be a fit. the discussion is usually general enough and the mods on enough crack to not notice if there's some small thing that goes wrong.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"stolen £200,000 using United States customers' personal information"
£200,000?! I smell a rat. What kind of Americans keep that much British money around?
Whatever you tink about Lou Dobbs, it's very irresponsible to just dismiss him as a racist.
Even "nationalist" is nonsense, he's merely pointing out one of the problems with unresitriced and unbalanced "unfair" trade. Now, you could argue this is a good thing, and we could point out the problems and have a discussion. But by labeling him a racist, the only thing you're trying to do is to "shut down" any arguments by coming up with ridiculous ad hominem attacks.
I'm an immigrant to this country, and I'm not a fan of outsourcing. I'm all for other immigrants from all over the world to continue coming here and contributing their talents to our local economies, but there is a problem when now people don't even want to become US residents, because they jobs are being drained away from here. We're about to face a serious crisis, when our technological workforce is being decimated by these companies. And there's nothing racist in pointing that out, nothing.
As for security, I don't think most if any people here are saying that a particular nationality is less trustworthy. But you'd be a fool if you don't recognize that some of the safety mechanism we enjoy in this country, are not as robust or even exist in other parts of the less developed world. As we deal with the poorest of nations, with our sensitive data, we have to be *extremely* careful. Already, there have been incidents of bribing by local crime syndicates in some of these countries to obtain data to steal identities. Can that happen in the US? Of course! But the question is, where is it more likely, and what are the protections we need to employ in these situations.
There's a rich discussion to be had on this topic, but please, try to come up with something better than "they're racist".
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.
"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."
Closer, in the instant case, meaning the same continent or at least someplace where we can capture and prosecute the fsckers.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
You forgot to offer chocolate for it...
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
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
That's all that matters to upper management -- savings. Now, with many offshoring efforts only yielding 10 or 15% savings, what does an event like this do? It blows any potential savings, resulting in a net loss. Nice going, Mr. Shiny Hair And Teeth Strategic-Thinker!
Now, this question is directed at those big-shot CIOs who troll here, let me ask you something (feel free to reply as ACs). How much money does something like *this* cost your precious bottom line? And when it happens again, then what? What could possibly happen that would make you think "Gee, maybe our technical staff shouldn't live on the other side of the world and work for somebody else (including our competition)?" Or does that even matter?
Yeah, yeah, I know... Fugeddaboutit, it's purely rhetorical. I realize that employment horizon of the corporate ruling class is only as far ahead as their golden parachute payout. I'm sure you'll find a way to blame these failures on somebody else, Mr. Executive, and your replacement can implement a new strategy for cleaning up the mess.
Sure location matters. If your employees are nearby, you can keep tabs on them. You might even be able to directly affect their morale in a positive manner.
Either way, you can keep better control of things.
Also, culture is relevant in these matters. Some countries have traditions of institutionalized graft. To casually gloss over such differences is the real racist notion here.
What you are promoting is pretty much equivalent to the notion that if you speak slow enough everyone will understand english.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I think the issue underscored here is risk vs. reward. For someone in the US 30,000 USD isn't *that* much, not enough for many of us to risk jail time. That amount barely covers a years salary for many and I'd say for most reading this site it is way less then a years salary. If you're making $2.00/hr that is a LOT of money. Now we are talking almost a DECADE of salary.
Maybe it's not the same story but both stories originate from Pune, India and both deal with employees of a call center transferring money in the amount of Rs 1.5 crore.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
My aim was certainly not to give the impression that I distrust people outside the United States but rather to discuss the idea of the purported plan for an "ownership society" within the U.S. of:
1. US Workers do menial labor
2. US outsources menial labor
3. US Workers do skilled labor
4. US outsources skilled labor
5. US Workers own everything and do no labor
6. US outsources all labor
What do we expect will happen? Why will we "own" everything? Because a piece of paper says we own it. What happens when the people that actually do the work tear up the piece of paper?
I think incidents like this are tiny examples of what's to come.
I'm a big tall mofo.
There is a remedy for handling this in the future for US citizens. We need to push our legislators to enforce it, which is obviously hard to do.
US Corporations are legally (criminally and civily) liable for the accuracy and protection of data that they collect on US Citizens.
This then needs to be negotiated into international treaties.
This would make a given company think twice about what information it really needs to be collecting, and how it will be protected. If the company wishes to outsource work, fine, that needs to be disclosed, and the company still remains liable for the protection of that data.
There need to be laws, and the laws must have teeth. This is a "service" that companies are carrying out "in the public trush." They need to be penalized for violations.
On behalf of American Identity Thieves Workers Union I would like to strongly protest against this clear
loss of jobs of American people!
Indian identity thieves steal our, American thieves jobs and endanger our true American way of life!
I honestly believe that our government should do something about it!
I think incidents like this are tiny examples of what's to come.
Exactly. It's already been proven in Argentina after the financial collapse there (brought about by too much outsourcing and too many large tax breaks given to foreign big business by President Menos, btw). One evening, all the foreign multinationals, including the banks, emptied their safes, chained the doors, and fled the country under cover of darkness. The next morning, the workers showed up to work and found they were all out of jobs. After sitting around moping for a while, they said "screw it", kicked the doors of the now-vacant factories down, started up the machines, and continued producing their product. They pay themselves all an equal wage, out of the profits. They call it fabrica ocupada, "occupied factory". Please note that Argentina was very prosperous, comparable to Canada or Australia.
Now the old owners have found out that the workers are able to cut prices on their products (while still maintaining quality), because the wages of the owners and the management perqs -- golf trips, planes and whatnot are actually the biggest wasteful overhead -- and demand possession of their abandoned factories back in order to stop the "people" from competing with them (they still make their goods elsewhere and ship them into Argentina).
Easy one first:
>>bad people are there in the US too,
Yes, and since they're in the US, in the employment of US companies, they may be easily and switftly prosecuted and stolen money may more easily be recovered. This is not the case in a country strattling the first-world/third-world fence. Hiring a lawyer to represent a foreign company on the other side of the world isn't easy, cheap or effective.
Now, the other point.
>>saving are much more that 10-15%, more around 60-70% atleast.
70%? No way, no how. Don't believe everything the marketing weasels tell you -- they're salesmen who get paid for getting your CIO to sign a contract, delivering results is somebody else's job and by that time the salesmen are long gone.
According to the big consulting firms, a very-well-executed offshore program *may* return 40% savings. In the case of a particular Fortune 100 with which I'm familiar a forecast (and we know how accurate those figures are) savings of 30% *may* only *potentially* be realized after the "startup" phase (i.e. first couple of years) during which there are no savings whatsoever because permanent staff must be pulled off assignments to train the replacement workers, startup/training costs are factored, software licensing costs are added (~4000 per seat at my shop) during the 1st year the offshore staff isn't handling all the support tasks (permanent staff is kept as "3rd/4th line backup", offshore "scouts" are flown to US to gather information, meetings to assess the effort are conducted, reviews of metrics, etc. etc.
In other words, some companies are spending A LOT more up front to offshore, with the hopes that somewhere down the line, years from now, when the permanent staff is fired, the company might save a few bucks. That's if everything goes perfectly, which it won't.
So far, many companies are just spending more and crossing their fingers, hoping the consulting companies deliver on promises.
How can they get by with this? Startup costs for offshoring efforts are put into a different slot by the accountants than operational costs which tends to mask the real spendings and underline the "savings." So it looks like a win-win situation which in fact it's a washout over a three or five year span.