London: After HSBC call centre fraud, the Sunday Times claimed that credit card data are being stolen from call centres in India.
The London daily said the credit card data, along with passport and driving licence numbers, sold to the highest bidder.
"Middlemen are offering bulk packages of tens of thousands of credit card numbers for sale. They even have access to taped telephone conversations in which British customers disclose sensitive security information to call centre staff," The Sunday Times reported quoting "an investigative" report by Channel 4.
Last June, the HSBC employee in Bangalore was arrested after 230,000 pounds was stolen from British customers' accounts.
HSBC said the theft in Bangalore was an isolated incident and the new investigation did not highlight any breaches in its security.
Security breaches have made some customers more reluctant to divulge information to call centres. Dave Pawson, 58, who works for the Royal National Institute for the Blind, had 220 pounds stolen from his HSBC debit card in 2006 and was suspicious when contacted by the bank that had detected the fraud.
According to the investigation carried by Channel 4, one middleman offering stolen data, Sushant Chandak, offered to sell a database with the credit card details of 200,000 people as commercial leads. At a meeting in Kolkata, he boasted of a network of agents in call centres across India.
In addition to credit card numbers, Chandak was also offering passport numbers, driving licence numbers and personal banking details, the report alleged.
In a separate meeting, Chandak offered the details of 8,000 British mobile phone users. He even apparently had tapes of customers being called at home from a call centre.
A second middleman in New Delhi, known as Ghufran, offered details of customers with Halifax, Nationwide, Woolwich, Bank of Scotland and NatWest for five pounds each. The details are believed to have been obtained from purchases using cards, the report claimed.
Ghufran claimed the information was obtained by technical support staff who visited call centres and used memory sticks to download recent sale transactions.
According to the newspaper, Chandak and Ghufran have denied unlawfully selling information. Chandak said the information he provided was not genuine, and Ghufran said he was passed the data.
With PTI inputs
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