Telangana police arrested a man from Faridabad for running a personal data mining racked, which involved confidential information of at least 669 million individuals and organisations whose details were sold to fraudsters who then used it for scams.
The victims were spread over 24 states and the data leaked included personally identifiable information – phone numbers, addresses and date of birth etc -- about various categories of people, such as those who were customers of particular learning companies, popular online shopping websites or had debit or credit cards.
“We have seized two mobile phones, two laptops and data of as many as 135 different categories containing sensitive information of the government and private organisations and also individuals, including students, senior citizens, defence personnel, government employees, credit and debit card holders, D- MAT account holders and PAN card account holders,” said Cyberabad police commissioner Stephen Ravindra.
The arrest spotlights the worrying state of data privacy in the country, where it was held as a fundamental right in 2017, and highlights the persistent threat of banking frauds and identity thefts that can be carried out with such rackets.
Earlier in March, Cyberabad police busted a similar operation with arrests made from the National Capital Region (NCR).
{{/usCountry}}Earlier in March, Cyberabad police busted a similar operation with arrests made from the National Capital Region (NCR).
{{/usCountry}}On Saturday, Ravindra identified the arrested person as Vinay Bhardwaj, who operated from his office in Faridabad. He allegedly collected the database from two people the police identified as Amer Sohail and Madan Gopal, both absconding.
Bhardwaj ran a digital marketing business called InspireWebz.
Ravindra said the data included those of GST payers, and customers of Road Transport Corporations, Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, Paytm, PhonePe, Big Basket, Book My Show, Instagram, Zomato, Policy Bazaar, Upstox, Byjus and Vedantu.
Police said the database was classified into different categories, including banks, insurance and financial services, doctors, software engineers, telecom, trading & stock broking, consulting services.
“Data of defence personnel was also found with him. It contains personal information including phone numbers, residential address, email id, date of birth etc,” Ravindra said, adding that investigation was on about the sources through which Bhardwaj managed to gather such voluminous data.
Such data can be used for impersonation and as a basis to launch more serious frauds on a victim.