London, October 1
A leading London daily today claimed that credit card data, along with passport and driving licence numbers, are being stolen from call centres in India and sold to the highest bidder. “Middlemen are offering bulk packages of tens of thousands of credit card numbers for sale. They even have access to taped telephone conversations in which British customers disclose sensitive security information to call centre staff,” The Sunday Times reported quoting “an investigative” report by Channel 4 to be shown next Thursday.
During the investigation for Channel 4’s Dispatches, one middleman, Sushant Chandak, offered to sell a database with the credit card details of two lakh persons as commercial “leads”. At a meeting in Kolkata, he boasted of a network of agents in call centres across India. In addition to credit card numbers, Chandak was also offering passport numbers, driving licence numbers and personal banking details, the report alleged.
In a separate meeting, Chandak offered the details of 8,000 British mobile phone users. He even apparently had tapes of customers being called at home from a call centre. A second middleman in New Delhi, only known as Ghufran, offered details of customers with Halifax, Nationwide, Woolwich, Bank of Scotland and NatWest for five pounds each.
Ghufran claimed the information was obtained by technical support staff who visited call centres and used memory sticks to download recent sale transactions.
— PTI
