You are being tracked! Your personal information has become a lucrative commodity for data collectors in the modern digital age. They target anything from recently completed flights and broadband connections to sold apartments, vehicle insurance that is about to expire, and even mutual fund assets!
An investigation conducted has shown that informants who supply these “datasets” to workers at call centers, BPOs, or telemarketing firms can sell such information for as little as Rs 150 to Rs 300.
One such instance is the 22-year-old telemarketing Rishabh Shukla (name changed), who begins his workday at 9 a.m. with a sheet that has 70–100 phone numbers of persons who have just purchased, leased, or sold an apartment in a residential complex in Noida. Shukla earned an extra Rs 5,000 in incentive payments from the leads he produced.
“But soon, this list started drying up, and I got used to the incentives,” said Shukla, adding that “I started going to every new apartment complex in Noida, tipped off the security guards, and took pictures of visitors’ registers to generate new leads.”
Shukla subsequently sold this data to online real estate platforms, which in turn sold the leads to a variety of companies, including internet service providers, brokers, interior designers, and property dealers.
“I made close to Rs. 1.5 lakhs in three months because these were the most accurate leads in the market. Online companies sometimes paid me Rs.
10,000 for every dataset,” Shukla revealed.
Blatant Data Theft
Experts in the sector claim that there are many sources of data leaks in the digital privacy landscape, which fuels the expansion of a booming industry.
“Blatant data theft, disguised as lead generation, has become an organized industry,” said Dhiraj Gupta, co-founder and CTO of digital fraud detection agency mfilterlt.
A quick Google search finds a multitude of websites that charge between Rs 120 and Rs 300 for targeted marketing leads, many of which claim to have been gained through “market research.” Interested parties can hire services for specific projects or buy leads that are exclusive to certain cities.
Getting leads is especially important in industries where competition is fierce.
For example, the CRM (customer relationship management) operator often sells the lead to a rival in exchange for a commission when a user seeks a data connection online from a service provider.
In other instances, group companies exchange data to enable cross-selling of mutual funds, credit cards, and loans. The travel and hospitality sectors share visitor records, and delivery drivers, mobile phone shops, and logistics companies act as data mining hubs.
Legal experts anticipate that the recently passed Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act will severely limit the uncontrolled sharing of personally identifiable data.
According to Shreya Suri, a partner at INDUSLAW, “with the DPDP Act holding violators accountable through penalties, data fiduciaries will need to be extremely cautious about managing and sharing personal data within their systems and third-party networks. Consent for unrelated purposes will no longer be conditional.”
Alkesh Kumar Sharma, a significant contributor to the Act and the former secretary of the IT Ministry, emphasizes that “the law places limitations on the purpose, time, and storage of data by fiduciaries, who will be accountable for any misuse without the data subject’s consent,” he said.
Nevertheless, it might take two to three years to fully comply with the DPDP Act.
Nine out of 10 of the top banks don’t even have a basic cookie consent manager on their websites, according to an analysis by IDfy, a business that specializes in identity management solutions.
WhatsApp Scam
The founder of GOQii, Vishal Gondal, recently told that a person posing as Gondal himself had targeted multiple team members over WhatsApp. According to the imposter, Gondal needed money because he was in a bad situation in London. “The most shocking part was how the scammer knew who my immediate team members were and had their phone numbers,” Gondal said. He noticed a clear trend in the con artists’ combined use of artificial intelligence, analytics, and data.
“We can’t trust what we see or hear anymore. How does one verify identity now?” he asked.
The state of voice cloning technology has progressed to the point where an extremely lifelike voice copy can be produced from just three seconds of audio.
Access to this skill is easy, as there are several websites offering free voice cloning services that claim to achieve up to 95% accuracy. Because this technology is so easily accessible, there are worries that it could be abused for fraudulent purposes.
Because generative AI can swiftly analyze large amounts of data from numerous sources and create complete profiles of individuals, its rapid development presents a serious threat. Experts warn that generative Al’s unbridled power could cause the voice cloning fraud issue to spiral out of control.
Moreover, the dark web provides an additional means of obtaining personal data. Sensitive information, including a person’s name, address, and Aadhaar number, can be found with a quick phone number search. The multiple data breaches that have happened over the last three years have made it simpler for bad actors to get and exploit personal data, which exacerbates this vulnerability.
Also read: Unveiling the Ethical Imperatives: Navigating the Intersection of AI and Cybersecurity
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