Newspaper: Indian call centers sell bank details

London police were investigating a newspaper claim on Thursday that confidential details of British bank accounts are being sold by criminals from Indian call centers.

The Sun said it had bought bank details of 1,000 Britons for just $5.50 each from a computer expert in Delhi who said he had obtained the information from contacts working in call centers.

In recent years, many British and U.S. businesses particularly in financial services have “outsourced” thousands of back-office jobs to India to save money on wages.

The paper said its reporter had obtained addresses, passwords, phone numbers and details of credit cards, passports and driving licenses which could be used to raid unsuspecting victim’s accounts.

A City of London police spokeswoman confirmed they were investigating the allegations.

“While allegations made in the dossier are very serious, City of London Police would like to remind people that incidents of this kind are relatively rare,” the spokeswoman said.

The Sun said the institutions targeted included many of Britain’s top banks such as HSBC, Barclays, and Lloyds TSB. It added the call center worker claimed he could provide 200,000 account details a month -- including those of U.S. citizens.

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The London police spokeswoman said “the breadth of what we are going to be investigating” was not clear yet.

About 350,000 call center workers and back-office agents are employed in India working for about a fifth of Western wages.

The industry suffered a blow in April when police arrested three employees over a $400,000 online credit card fraud in which Citibank customers were allegedly enticed to part with their personal identification numbers.

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Staff checks
Ian Mullen, the British Banking Association’s chief executive, said they were concerned but added staff in India were checked as rigorously as workers elsewhere.

“The quality of staff in these call centers is very high,” he told BBC radio.

His Indian counterparts said they would help any investigation.

“We believe that any case of theft or a breach of a customer’s confidentiality must be treated extremely seriously,” India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies said in a statement.

“The problem is not unique to any single nation -- it is one that affects us all.”

However, British finance trade union Amicus said it had been warning about the danger of moving jobs to India because it did not have the same data protection measures as Britain.

“What’s quite obvious is the banks have rushed forward in search of profits at the expense of consumers’ security,” an Amicus spokesman said.

“We have quite robust data protection legislation in the U.K. and you can regulate more effectively. It’s much harder to do that in India.”