[IP] "Your Life for Sale"
Begin forwarded message:
From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 23, 2005 5:23:44 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: "Your Life for Sale"
Dave:
The BBC reported this morning that today's edition of the (UK) Sun
newspaper - a mass-market tabloid - carried a story about call centre
workers in India selling details of bank accounts.
I checked and found they do have a website (of sorts), though it
contains only a brief summary of the story, at:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005280724,00.html
Your life for sale
Cash for a villain ... crooked Kkaran Bahree with Sun undercover
reporter Oliver Harvey in Delhi
By OLIVER HARVEY
CROOKED call centre workers in India are flogging details of
Britons' bank accounts, a Sun probe has found.
Our undercover reporter was sold the top secret information on a
thousand accounts, and numbers of passports and credit cards.
For Full Story and Pictures Buy Today's Sun Newspaper
Luckily, prompted by the story, the BBC has a fuller version of the
story online at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4121934.stm
Indian call centre 'fraud' probe
Police are investigating reports that an Indian call centre worker
sold the bank account details of 1,000 UK customers to an
undercover reporter.
The Sun claims one of its journalists bought the personal details
from an IT worker in Delhi for £4.25 each.
They included account holders' secret passwords, addresses, phone
numbers and passport details, it reports.
City of London Police has begun an investigation after being handed
a dossier by the newspaper.
The centre worker reportedly told the Sun he could sell up to
200,000 account details each month.
Details handed to the reporter had been examined by a security
expert who had indicated they were genuine, the paper said.
The information passed on could have been used to raid the accounts
of victims or to clone credit cards.
'Reflect on decision'
More than one bank is thought to be involved in the fraud.
A police spokeswoman said officers were not yet aware of "the
breadth of what we are going to be investigating".
"While the allegations made in the dossier are very serious, City
of London Police would like to remind people that incidents of this
kind are still relatively rare," she said.
The Amicus union said it had warned of the "data protection
implications" of offshoring financial services.
"Companies that have offshore jobs need to reflect on their
decision and the assumption that cost savings benefiting them and
their shareholders outweigh consumer confidentiality and
confidence," senior finance officer Dave Fleming said.
Cheers
Brian Randell
--
School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon
Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell@xxxxxxxxx PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/
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