India BPOs under scanner after TV channel exposes data leak

The London daily, the Sunday Times, quoting an "investigative" report by Channel 4, said that the credit card data, along with passport and driving license numbers, are stolen from call centers in India and 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 center staff," The Sunday Times reported in a shocking expose.

The Sunday Times' report has made Kiran Karnik, president, National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), the premier trade body and the chamber of commerce of the IT software and services industry, fumble for explanations as recently he had boasted that the country's BPO industry has the potential to process up to 30 percent of all US bank transactions by 2010, while it currently does around 8 percent.

According to industry sources, many BPOs, including Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, Zenta and Office Tiger, carry out cash recovery for American Express, Chase Bank and Capital One Bank. They collect credit card and bill payments from US citizens.

Industry sources say India does banking transactions at a substantially lower price (about 40 percent lower than the US).

Channel 4 is understood to have spent over a year trying to locate security lapses in India's call centers.

The program titled 'The Data Theft Scandal' is a part of Channel 4's investigative series 'Dispatches' that will be telecast in the UK on October 5.

"NASSCOM had been in correspondence with Channel 4/Dispatches in connection with the broadcast and had requested details of the allegations which Dispatches intends to make together with the evidence/support documentation that they have. Dispatches have refused to provide that information," NASSCOM said.

"Whilst there are a lot of unanswered questions, we take any allegation of a breach in our security extremely seriously. It is vital that Dispatches co-operates immediately so that the perpetrators of any breach can be brought to justice and lessons can be learnt. NASSCOM will reach out to the Indian police to investigate the claims made in the program," Nasscom president Kiran Karnik said.