Indian Call Centre Worker Sells Customer Details

lxt writes "A British tabloid newspaper managed to buy the personal details of over 1000 bank customers from an off-shore call centre based in Delhi. An IT worker at the call centre handed over details at £4.25 per customer, as well as credit card numbers and account passwords. He claimed could sell over 200,000 account details every month. The British police force has passed on details to Interpol and the Indian authorities, in an attempt to prosecute the individual. The BBC is also covering the story."

Comments

Indian press

[anandpur]

This story is all over in Indian press.
http://us.rediff.com/money/2005/jun/23bpo.htm
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1408799,001 300460000.htm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/115 0344.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/115 0670.cms
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=4 9334

Re:Lowest bidder indeed

[tomstdenis]

That's the dumbest thing I've ever read. Fraud is illegal in India [many codes]. In particular [IANAIL but...] section 423 of the Indian Penal code seems to deal with this. It's two years in prison. ;-)

Use a google search engine next time.

Tom

Re:To be fair, it's a western problem too

[robertjw]

Call center employees in the US and Europe don't pull what you'd call high salaries either.

That's true, but offshore call centers make less - they have to, companies wouldn't be outsourcing to them. One of the big problems is, due to exchange rates and costs (the same reason work is outsourced there), it's much cheaper to purchase this type of information from a employee in India.

Think about it, if I read the article right, this guy sold 1000 names for about $8000. That might be his whole annual wage. If someone came to me, as a IT professional in the US and offered me $8000 to sell private corporate information, I would laugh at him. Now if someone came and offered my whole annual salary, I could be tempted. Thing is, private information on 1000 people probably wouldn't be worth my annual salary, or even the annual salary of a call center worker.

Bottom line is you can always find someone that will steal information for you for a price. Outsourcing to India, China or Russia just lowers the price of the information you want.