Personal details are up for sale for less than a rupee

It is hard to believe that your personal data, be it your residential address, your phone number, email id, details of what you bought online, age, marital status, income and profession is all up for sale but that’s not it. Most of this is sold for less thasn a rupee.

ET reported that the data is sod anywhere between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000 for the personal data of up to 1 lakh people in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Delhi.

The lists up for sale are creative and granular. One data broker said he could get lists of high net worth individuals, salaried people, credit card holders, car owners and retired women in any given vicinity.

Some brokers sent free samples: excel sheets with personal data of people in Bengaluru, split by address and income profiles. “It’s scary to say the least,” said Hyderabad-based Rajashekar, whose data like name, address and credit card ownership was procured from a Gurgaon-based data broker who sold ET a sample database of nearly 3,000 people with Axis Bank and HDFC Bank credit cards.

The database had details like name, address, phone number and the classification of the card (debit, credit or a premium card). The broker also said that a database of 1.7 lakh people from Delhi, NCR and Bengaluru can be made available for Rs 7,000.

“It should be deemed as a crime. Without my permission, how can someone trade information related to me?” said Bengaluru-based Nagaraj BK, who was appalled that details of his purchase of a gas stove on eBay were procured by ET as part of a free sample.

However, eBay said it takes data security and privacy of buyers and sellers on its platform very seriously. An Amazon spokesperson said the company was not aware of any data leak or any data being sold from their end, adding that any such case brought to their notice will be dealt with strictly to ensure customer data protection.

The obvious question to ask is: where are these brokers getting the data from? “Most of the data is sold to us by mobile service providers, agents from hospitals and banks, loan agents, car dealers,” Rajesh, an executive from an NCR-based data broker, told ET.