Your life for sale
Cash for a villain ... crooked Kkaran Bahree with Sun undercover reporter Oliver Harvey in Delhi
By OLIVER HARVEY
and SUN ONLINE REPORTER
CROOKED call centre workers in India are flogging details of Britons’ bank accounts, a Sun probe has found.
Our undercover reporter Oliver Harvey was sold the top secret information on a thousand accounts, and numbers of passports and credit cards.
And today City of London police launched an investigation after receiving a dossier of information from The Sun giving details of the banks whose security may have been compromised.
A number of high street banks including Barclays, the Woolwich, HSBC and Lloyds TSB, said they were working with police.
Harvey, who paid a total of 5,000 US dollars (£2,750) for the information and was asked for another £275 to be sent later, was told details usually cost £4.25 but he was getting a special deal.
Kkaran Bahree, who said he got the details from a network of call centre workers in Delhi, also boasted that he could get up to 2,000 account details a month.
The information received included account holders’ addresses, secret
passwords, credit card details, passports and driving licence information.
In some cases there were also the issue and expiry dates of bank cards, as well as the three digit security number from the back of the card.
A spokeswoman for the City of London Police said: "All the financial
institutions identified have been fully informed of the situation.
"An investigation is now under way. Therefore it would be inappropriate for us to provide further details at this stage."
The spokeswoman said The Sun handed police the names of banks that might have been compromised following an investigation into the security of financial information held at foreign call centres.
"At this stage we are not fully aware of the breadth of what we are going to be investigating.
"We have been handed information and it is being reviewed."
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005280724,00.html
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"Progress comes from deviation".
On a side note if anybody finds my comments or posts offensive or irritating please ignore it and if that still bothers you; please write to me and I will demonstrate.
Location: Ottawa (Now in Bangalore)
Posted on: 23-06-05 22:18:26
Already posted here
http://www.canadiandesi.ca/read.php?TID=9057
Thats strike 1 BL 
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"Aur Vaise Bhi, Sharafat ki jab kapde utarti hai, sabse zyaada mazaa shareefon ko hi aati hai"....(From The Dirty Picture)
Warning !! SCAM ALERT !!
http://www.canadiandesi.ca/read.php?TID=4169 & http://www.canadiandesi.ca/read.php?TID=1379
This is a Useful Health related Tip
http://www.canadiandesi.ca/read.php?TID=3865
Please visit
http://www.cmje.org/religious-texts/quran/verses/009-qmt.php for some interesting Information ! (Especially 009.005 )
Don't you think it would make more sense if it was under Our native country section......??
I know its news but then most of the issues are!
Besides I wanna know what people think about this guys mentality.
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"Progress comes from deviation".
On a side note if anybody finds my comments or posts offensive or irritating please ignore it and if that still bothers you; please write to me and I will demonstrate.
Thats pretty bad...I wont be surprised if the call center outsourcing trend reverses. I hear a lot of complaints even without the above.
BTW,
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The information received included account holders’ addresses, secret
passwords, credit card details, passports and driving licence information.
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Arent password encrypted and not even the admin of a system can see it?
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I once made a mistake, but I was wrong about it.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1151521,curpg-1.cms
BPO blues: The Westside story of backlash
NEW DELHI: The British media, in an apparent attempt to malign the image of Indian outsourcing industry, has come up with what it calls a 'sting operation' on how Indian call centre employees are leaking out financial secrets of its clients.
The leading British tabloid The Sun carried a report on how an Indian call centre employee had hawked the confidential financial details of 1,000 British clients.
This allegation comes as a surprise as similar incidents that happened with British and American call centres were conveniently hushed up.
So, why target India? "Insecurity," says an impassioned Rajiv Khandelwal, a college graduate who has just joined a leading call centre in Gurgaon.
"Basically, these firangs (foreigners) are insecure with the way they are losing out their jobs to us. And, this is racist backlash just another example," he says.
So how credible is The Sun story? If one goes by what spokeswoman for Barclays (one of the banks that outsourced services to the accused call centre) said, it's certainly not.
She had almost instantly picked holes in the story by pointing out that her bank had never sent customers' personal details over to India.
Sadly, Barclays' clarification was barely heard over the hullabaloo...
.. that The Sun story created.
The call centre employees are up in arms and say the move is a part of a systematic backlash against Indian outsourcing.
This incident is not the first backlash against Indian BPOs. The British and the American media have been the most vocal against outsourcing to India.
In January 2005, two American radio jockeys Star and Buc Wild, in a feeble attempt to be 'funny' broadcast an abusive call, laced with racist and sexist innuendoes, that was placed to an Indian call-centre worker.
Abuse from British and American customers is driving increasing numbers of Indian call centre workers from their jobs, frustrated and angered with persistent rudeness.
Says a technical support officer with a leading Gurgaon-based call centre, "This is not a new phenomenon. A similar incident happened in US some time back, but was hushed up after the matter was settled."
Much in tune with what the government has said. Communications and IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran told reporters that it s a matter to be solved between the company and its employees.
"It is a matter between a company and its employees. It is also a subject matter between the call centre company and the company which has given this contract," he said.
Even in western countries, there are reports on a number of credit card frauds, he said, adding such happenings are not unique to India, it happens elsewhere also.
So, will this breach adversely affect the Indian...
.. outsourcing industry?
No, says Indian IT trade association Nasscom. "These incidents are rare and can happen at call centres regardless of which country they are located in."
However, Kiran Karnik, chief of NASSCOM asserted that any case of theft or a breach of a customer's confidentiality must be treated extremely seriously.
"It does not matter if the crime is 'traditional' in its nature or whether it is what is known as a 'cyber crime'". NASSCOM said Indian IT companies, undertaking work for United Kingdom companies, comply with all the requirements of the Data Protection Act, as well as other security and confidentiality requirements.
The industry is determined to raise standards even further, it said.
Priyanka Singh, a customer care officer with an Okhla-based call centre says, "It's true that minor incidents do happen and the need to be dealt with seriously as it does effect our reputation outside. But, targetting Indian BPOs seems to be the trend now, I'm sure such things do happen in the West as well."
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I once made a mistake, but I was wrong about it.
Once a business sees an opportunity to cut costs, no matter what it will do whats necessary...
http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/24/news/fortune500/ibm_india/index.htm?cnn=yes
As IBM cuts in U.S., it hires in India
Report: Big Blue plans to bring on 14,000 Indian workers as it proceeds with U.S., European layoffs.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - IBM is planning to hire more than 14,000 new workers in India this year, even as the company proceeds with layoffs of up to 13,000 workers in Europe and the United States, the New York Times reported Friday, citing an internal company document.
IBM (Research) Senior Vice President Robert Moffat, in an interview with the newspaper, said the move is not entirely about cost saving.
"People who say this is simply labor arbitrage don't get it. It's mostly about skills," Moffat was quoted as saying.
The buildup in IBM's labor force in India, Moffat told the Times, was attributable to surging demand for technology services in a thriving Indian economy and the opportunity to tap the many skilled Indian software engineers to work on projects around the world.
Lower trade barriers and cheaper telecommunications and computing ability help allow a distant labor force to work on technology projects, he said in the report.
"You are no longer competing just with the guy down the street, but also with people around the world," he told the Times.
Moffat told the newspaper that IBM is hiring people around the world, including many in the United States, in new businesses that the company has marked for growth, even as it trims elsewhere.
The company announced last month that it would cut 10,000 to 13,000 jobs, about a quarter of them in the United States and the bulk in Western Europe, the newspaper said.
Critics, however, contend that IBM is a leading example of the corporate strategy of shopping the globe for the cheapest labor in a single-minded pursuit of profits, to the detriment of wages, benefits and job security in the U.S. and in other developed countries, the report said.
Washington-based WashTech, a group that seeks to unionize such workers, gave the IBM document labeled "IBM Confidential" on Indian employment to the New York Times, the newspaper said.
According to the report, IBM's overall employment in the United States has held steady for the last few years, at about 130,000.
The newspaper said IBM declined to comment on the document or the numbers in it.
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I once made a mistake, but I was wrong about it.
Quote:
"People who say this is simply labor arbitrage don't get it. It's mostly about skills," Moffat was quoted as saying.
