Data theft: Cyberabad cops nab man who stole personal info of 66.9 cr people in 24 states
The accused was operating through a website called “Inspire Webz” in Faridabad, Haryana, and was selling the data to clients through cloud drive links
By Newsmeter Network Published on 1 April 2023 11:47 AM GMT
Hyderabad: The Cyberabad police busted one of the biggest data theft cases and arrested a person involved in the illegal procurement and sale of personal and confidential data of 66.9 crore individuals and organisations across 24 states and eight metropolitan cities.
The accused, identified as Vinay Bhardwaj, established an office in Faridabad and collected data from Amer Sohail and Madan Gopal. He used social media platforms to resell the data to fraudsters for profits.
The accused reportedly had 18 lakhs data of students from Byju’s and Vedantu as well as the data of 1.84 lakh cab users and 4.5 lakh salaried employees across six cities and Gujarat state.
The accused was found to have consumer/customer data of major organisations like GST, RTO, Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, Paytm, PhonePe, Big Basket, BookMyShow, Instagram, Zomato, Policy Bazaar, and Upstor, among others. He was selling the personal and confidential data of about 66.9 crore individuals and organisations maintained in 104 categories.
Some of the categories included Defence personnel, government employees, PAN card holders, students’ data of grades 9 to 12, senior citizens, Delhi electricity consumers, D-MAT account holders, mobile numbers of various individuals, NEET students, high-net-worth individuals, insurance holders, credit card, and debit card holders.
Here where he got the data from:
Paytym - 50 lakhs
PhonePe - 1.8 lakhs
YouTube - 62.3 lakhs
Netflix - 22 lakhs
GST - 25 lakhs
RTO- 10 lakhs
CRED App - 3 lakhs
Policy Bazar - 7.8 lakhs
Amazon - 10.2 lakhs
Book My Show - 53.5 lakhs
Instagram - 9.4 lakhs
Facebook and Instagram – 800 URLs
Data of students - 2 crore
Neet students - 1.8 lakhs
Class 9,10 data - 1.5 crore
NRI data - 1.2 lakhs
The accused was operating through a website called “Inspire Webz” in Faridabad, Haryana, and was selling the data to clients through cloud drive links. He has been selling data for the last 8-10 months.
The police seized two mobile phones, two laptops, and data of 135 categories containing sensitive information of government, private organisations, and individuals.
The Cyberabad police have advised people to be cautious and verify the authenticity of calls and messages from unknown sources. They have urged the public to change their passwords and not share personal information with anyone they do not trust.
