wordpress blog stats
Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Cyberabad police bust a gang selling personal data of 16.8 Crore citizens

The gang sold sensitive information under at least 140 different categories including details of defence personnel, government employees, students, etc.

Update on April 3, 2023: According to the latest updates in the case, the Cyberabad police has discovered that data of 66.9 Crore individuals across 44 categories in 24 states was stolen by a Haryana resident, The New Indian Express reported. The police have arrested the accused Vinay Bharadwaj who had his hands on students’ data from platforms like Byju’s and Vedanta, 1.84 lakh cab users in eight metro cities and 4.5 lakh salaried employees from six cities and Gujarat state.

As per a report by News Meter, the Cyberabad police has also issued notices to companies like Big Basket, Phone Pay, Tech Mahindra, Policy Bazaar and financial institutions like Axis Bank, Bank of Baroda, HDFC, SBI among others seeking a response on the leak of user data.

Originally published on March 24, 2023: In a massive data-theft case in India, the Cyberabad cybercrime police in Telangana arrested members of a gang involved in “procuring and selling” personal data of 16.8 crore individuals and confidential data of government and important organisations, as per a report by Telangana Today.

On March 23, the Cyberabad police tweeted that they busted a gang of ten fraudsters involved in collecting confidential information of account holders from banks and cheating credit card holders.


FREE READ of the day by MediaNama: Click here to sign-up for our free-read of the day newsletter delivered daily before 9 AM in your inbox.


What data did the gang have?

The police informed that the gang members were found selling information under at least 140 different categories. As per the Telangana Today report, this data included the following information and more:

  1. Details of defence personnel
  2. Women and government employees
  3. Student database
  4. Loan, insurance, credit, and debit card applicants
  5. Data of demat account holders and high net-worth individuals
  6. Mobile numbers of 3 crore citizens
  7. Data of 1.20 crore WhatsApp users
  8. Age, email-id, phone number, login IP of 17 lakh Facebook users
  9. Database of PAN holders, IT employees, Energy and power sector

Why it matters:

This case is another reminder that citizens’ data is not safeguarded by a robust, secure system in both government and non-government Indian institutions. In addition to identity theft, people with access to citizens’ sensitive personal data are committing cyber crimes of serious nature, which can be detrimental to an individual’s social and financial security. As we await the data protection law, most of these critical crimes are registered under different sections of the IT Act, thus offering some level of impunity to gangs having deeper networks, who can easily escape stricter action. In such a situation, citizens are left thinking: how close are each of us to getting our data leaked from any known or unknown source?

According to the report, the members “registered and unregistered three companies – Data Mart Infotech, Global Data Arts and MS Digital Grow” for their operations. Cybercrime investigators also revealed that the database of mobile numbers was leaked from telecom service providers, while the credit and debit card data was leaked from “reputed financial institutions”. According to Money Control, the accused sold the data to at least 100 fraudsters.

Who was involved?

Speaking to reporters, Cyberabad Police Commissioner Stephen Raveendran highlighted the role of data brokers in leaking confidential information to sources that can misuse the data.

 

The arrested suspects primarily worked as data entry operators and tele-callers, as per Telangana Today. The gang included one Kumar Nitish Bhushan, a call-centre operator, Sandeep Pal, who ran Global Data Arts, Zia Ur Rehman, who provided messaging services for promotions, and a couple of other mediators who sold data to fraudsters.

Increasing threat to people’s personal data

It’s not just about data leaking from different institutions. The Indian police from different states have unearthed operations of multiple gangs stealing people’s Aadhaar biometric data from multiple sources. The accurate number of Aadhaar-related frauds is not recorded by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). Instead, the resulting cybercrimes from such data theft are registered under different categories in the NCRB.

The latest data from NCRB shows that in 2021, a total of 4071 cases of identity theft were registered across India. Additionally, credit and debit card-related frauds rose to 1624 in 2021 from 1194 in 2020. Given the massive size of data procured by fraudsters in each of these data theft cases, it won’t be incorrect to say that the number of cybercrimes including identity theft can be greater as most of these cases remain unreported or even unidentified.

(The article was edited on April 3, 2023 at 1:11 pm to add the latest updates in the case.)


This post is released under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license. Please feel free to republish on your site, with attribution and a link. Adaptation and rewriting, though allowed, should be true to the original.

Also Read:

Written By

Curious about the intersection of technology with education, caste and welfare rights. For story tips, please feel free to reach out at sarasvati@medianama.com

Free Reads

News

As per a report, Apple has been testing its own large language model (LLM) since last year but its technology remains behind the AI...

News

Telecom companies are against a regulatory sandbox, as they think information revealed by businesses during the sandboxing process might be confidential should be out...

News

According to a statement, the executive body of the European Union had also sought internal documents on the risk assessments and mitigation measures for...

MediaNama’s mission is to help build a digital ecosystem which is open, fair, global and competitive.

Views

News

NPCI CEO Dilip Asbe recently said that what is not written in regulations is a no-go for fintech entities. But following this advice could...

News

Notably, Indus Appstore will allow app developers to use third-party billing systems for in-app billing without having to pay any commission to Indus, a...

News

The existing commission-based model, which companies like Uber and Ola have used for a long time and still stick to, has received criticism from...

News

Factors like Indus not charging developers any commission for in-app payments and antitrust orders issued by India's competition regulator against Google could contribute to...

News

Is open-sourcing of AI, and the use cases that come with it, a good starting point to discuss the responsibility and liability of AI?...

You May Also Like

News

Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...

Advert

135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...

News

By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...

News

Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...

MediaNama is the premier source of information and analysis on Technology Policy in India. More about MediaNama, and contact information, here.

© 2008-2021 Mixed Bag Media Pvt. Ltd. Developed By PixelVJ

Subscribe to our daily newsletter
Name:*
Your email address:*
*
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide

© 2008-2021 Mixed Bag Media Pvt. Ltd. Developed By PixelVJ