Employees from Indian call centres are selling Britons’ confidential personal data, including credit card information, medical and financial records to criminals and marketing firms for as little as two pence, an undercover investigation has discovered. Two ‘consultants’, claiming to be IT workers at several call centres boasted of possessing 45 different sets of personal information on nearly 500,000 Britons. The information, much of which is related to customers at major financial companies, including HSBC, Barclays, Halifax, Lloyds TSB and NatWest, would allow criminals to syphon thousands of pounds from bank accounts within minutes.
Indian authorities said their efforts to combat corruption have been thrwarted by the unwillingness of companies, keen to avoid negative publicity, reporting data losses.
