NEWS: Identity theft crisis emerging from outsourced call centres.

Front page news in the Sun today is a scheme revealed by one of their undercover reporters. Our information (UK, USA, etc) stored in call centres based in India are being sold for as little as £3 a time in their 100's of thousands to criminals.



This was obviously going to happen, this is something that people should be very concerned about. No matter how careful you are with your details, nothing can stop them being acquired in this manner.

I will try and find more details on this story but I'm at work and it was a Sun exclusive with one of their reporters, I'll add more as it comes up. Hopefully tomorrow there will be more stories.

news.bbc.co.uk...

www.sky.com...



[edit on 23-6-2005 by AgentSmith]

[edit on 23-6-2005 by AgentSmith]

A very serious matter indeed. Its just a shame that the primary response elicted from this story amongst my peers is 'Bloody Indians'.

Im not surprised either. We have just sorted out the phone for my nanna over here as she was getting inundated with unsolicited calls from Indian based call centers.

They were using automatic diallers and most of the time didnt even have anyone on the end of the phone to answer it when we picked up. It would just hang up and the calls started from 9am until 11pm.

That these scum bags would sell our information to criminals does not surprise me in the slightest. Something needs to be done against these nuisances and now potential threats to individuals.

[edit on 23/6/05 by subz]

Outsourcing.

...you get what you pay for, folks.

Thanks for that vote of confidence Ambient... Wish I had a way above award left... I'd give it to you right now.

My wife and I both work in ancillary areas of data processing. We are both amazed that the people of this country (Good Ol' USofA) are standing by and watching as the government condones total greed by letting the large companies outsource jobs away from Americans to places like India, China, Canada, and South America. These people will work for less wages, but the sense of business integrity in places like India, and China will, in all likelihood, be the downfall of the whole movement.

interestng to note, and a cause for shudder in your virtual spines is that at least some of your federal tax returns are being processed in foreign places (Gee Wally, Does that mean they have access to your social security number and all teh proprietary information that you give the government is up for grabs)? Hmmm ...

And a year or a little more ago, I recall the story of the Indian medical transcriptionist who held medical records hostage with threats of openly posting them on the internet, unless she got the money she wanted.

We won't go into the other scam possibilities that are in extent... I believe some if not a great many of us have some awe inspiring stories to share....

Like Ambient said, "You get what you pay for".....

This is outrageous

These jobs should remain within our own borders so good white people can rob us instead of evil (probably Al-Qaida affiliated) brown skinned ones

The problem of fraud has always existed, almost as long as credit / debit cards have been around. There was just as much fraud when these call centres were based in our own countries and you'll always get dishonest staff eager to make a fast buck.
Having said that, the number of cases of "hacked" bank databases and mass identity theft have increased alarmingly in recent times. It's probably safer to keep your cash in a shoebox under the bed (as an example... like, I'm really gonna tell you where my shoebox is).
Automation and supposedly secure systems just don't seem to deter the determined criminal and the human factor is the biggest risk of all.

[edit on 23-6-2005 by Britguy]

Just a though here..... if our own government is crap, can we outsource to Mumbai too???
Ok, we'd still most likely get a bunch of lying weasels (that's politics for ya) but they'd be a lot cheaper than our current ones and put in more hours

Who says we're "letting" them do this? Do we REALLY have a choice? Do you think your vote REALLY counts? Outsourcing to third world countries isn't the greatest idea. But hey, I guess there are criminals and greed everywhere. Maybe it just took them a little time to come up with this crap.

There are criminals and greed everywhere, but background checks and such like arn't as good over there, I'm nopt even sure they have an equivilent of our Criminal Records Bureau.
And considering in that country a job which pays £6/hour here pays 80p/hour there I would have thought that the chances of people becoming more corrupt are higher. It has nothing to do with skin colour, it does have everything to do with their economy and standard of living and the high rewards and ease of stealing our information.
Apparantly the register of Births Deaths and Marriages is going to be moved over there too.
At the end of the day there have always been problems like this in the past but nothing quite on this scale I believe while this information was kept here only.
Also, how do you feel having every single little piece of information about you stored on computers in an area of the world near the heart of terrorist areas where it is more easily accessible by the enemy?
It has already been proven through this one incident out of many that security is seriously lacking and anyone could have access to the information.