Private data of users of caller ID and UPI payments app Truecaller - including names, phone numbers and email addresses - is available for purchase on the so-called dark web, reports the Economic Times, citing an unnamed cyber security analyst. The report said the data of Indian users was being sold for about €2,000 (approx Rs 1.55 lakh), while that of global users was priced as high as €25,000 (approx Rs 19.5 lakh) on the dark web, which is a part the web that requires special software to access, and allows users to remain untraceable. ET said it had reviewed a sample data set that was on sale and found it contained personal data of users, which it verified against data from the Truecaller app itself. It's worth noting that 100 million or 77% of Truecaller's 130 million worldwide daily active users are in India. In a statement to MediaNama, a Truecaller spokesperson denied that the company’s database had been breached but said it was possible that some malicious users had been abusing their Truecaller accounts to collect phone numbers in violation of the company’s terms of service. It said the data set that ET had shared with it contained fields that its users make available for search in the app, and did not come from its own database. “The majority of the data that we analysed did not match our systems,” the spokesperson said. The company also said it had strict search limits and other precautionary measures in place…
