Have you ever wondered about the database that exists with telemarketing professionals? Almost everyone of us in India would have got annoyed with the timing of such callers if not about the product they sell. This menace didn’t spare our finance minister too! I recently came across an email in my mailbox which read as below:
Dear All,
Hope this mail finds you in the best of moods and spirits.
We offer customers details in the following areas:1. IT Professionals/Operations/ITES/HR/Admin/ Banking/ Telecom/ Marketing/Advertising/ PR/ Accounting/ Tax/ Airline
2. Journalist All India
3. Insurance Agents Bangalore
4. HR Heads (All India)
5. Salaried Professionals (Income of 5 lakh to 50 lakh + HNI’s)
6. IT Professionals (Wipro, Infosys, Accenture, IBM, TCS, Oracle, Dell, Biocon, Cognizant, GE, etc.,)
7. For Telecalling Companies (Name, mobile no. and company) – All the citiesFor further Query Contact us at +91 xxxxxxxxxx or 080 xxxxxxxx or Email us
Now the point of interest is how they can get hold of such confidential and private data and sell it to others. Read through each bullet carefully for the kind of classification and varied data about individuals based on the company they work for or the salary range. Think about all those incidents where you might have compromised while sharing your classified information. Outright, I could think of the following possibilities:
- Taking assistance from agencies/individuals while filing tax returns.
- Dropping lucky draw coupons at shopping malls with address and phone numbers.
- Sharing pay slips with multiple bank agents while looking for home/personal loan.
- Credit card selling 3rd party vendors involved while pre-processing.
And the list goes on… Just think about how serious this issue is and be smart while handing over your classified information to anyone. By the way, did I tell you that I also got an email for the nth time this morning mentioning that I won 750,000 pounds for no reason… Are you feeling lucky too?
pramod says
very enlightening post. great compilation and presentation.and a matter of worry too.
umesh derebail says
Thanks for your info, even mailing on google and yahoo, can be ridden with danger, particularly recieving passwords pl spread the word
VS says
A very good post Mohan.
Your post reminds of the days when I used to get too many SMS’s and mails with offers related to training and investment ideas. Guess who the culprit was. Those were the days when I was looking for a job change and enrolled in naukri, monster, linkedin etc.,. When I realized the reason behind these sudden spurt in annoying mails and SMS’s I deleted my profile from the forums that allowed profile deletion. And in others I filled out junk meaningless character strings.
Just another instance where we give away a lot of personal and professional information totally unaware of the various ways it could be used.
Mohan says
Thanks VS! Well, there you go… at times it makes me thing there is no safety for our data in this tech savvy world!
Ash says
Very informative post, Mohan. Thank you so much for sharing this and bringing it to our attention.
Mohan says
Thanks Ash!
RESTLESS says
You brought out a very important issue. It is more serious than we think.
thanks for sharing this.
RESTLESS
Mohan says
My pleasure! glad you liked it.
Roshmi (Musings of an Unknown Indian) says
Wherever we share our personal details… banks, insurance companies, social networking sites… our personal info makes its way elsewhere and is eventually found floating all over. Need not be thru 3rd parities or agents I guess.
You won 750,000 pounds for no reason! Wow! If you believe in this stroke of luck… your purse will be considerably lighter 🙂
Mohan says
Or probably these 3rd party agents have a very good way of aggregating details!
Juzar Noorani says
Hello Mohan,
Good to read your article and the four points where people share their information with everyone. Just to let you know that there is a nuisance of identity theft in the western countries which has not become so popular in India, but it can kill you before you are actually dead.
Take Care.
Mohan says
Yes, I am aware of it. the day of worrying about identity theft isn’t too far for us in India I suppose.
Eddie Gear says
Very true, that telemarketing professionals have your info. When Social Media Giants like FACEBOOK sell your information, users are being so ignorant that they still dont want to stop using the system inspite of knowing that their personal information is not safe.
Mohan says
There are ways to protect our information too with a little bit of precaution.
Jayanth Kashyap says
Good Lord! The four bullet points were killers! Thanks Mohan! Have to exercise caution..
Mohan says
My pleasure! Better to be cautious that repenting for our silly mistakes!
farila says
People tell me I leave way too much of Info on my blog and facebook… I am not sure about this. Airtel calls have been the most disturbing commercialism for me..
Mohan says
Better to think once before sharing personal info on the internet space.
Nandhini says
The last point about feeling lucky for winning jackpots hasn’t stopped over the years. Sometimes the name and the subject line is so realistic that I tend to open the mail. Am surprised from where do these people get our email IDs?
Mohan says
I got yet another mail this time worth 9,500,000 pounds! There is a bigger version of the conspiracy and it will take atleast another 10 posts to cover it all on how people get access to our email addresses.
Lakshmi says
This is one unfortunate by- product of globalization, and consumerism. I receive on an average two or three personalized insurance offers, credit card offers and so on everyday in my mail box.
However, I thought banks and credit card companies say that our information is safe and private with them in their terms and conditions!
Mohan says
Lucky you… you just get about 5 offers a day! Well, the data might be safe with these banking companies, but not with the outsourced 3rd party agencies which do the ground work before you establish an association with the bank.
Hemanth Kumar says
We need to be careful, Specially when you are on Facebook, be careful don’t click what your friends are sharing, lot of Facebook apps are stealing your data by your permission, Of course you don’t know about that, as you clicked you are approved them to take your data. Not only Facebook don’t share any information, If you get a call saying that surveys etc. I wonder how those people got my number, when they called me.
Mohan says
Facebook is one of the modes… there are many more such tools there!
praveen says
Hi All,
Some time we can avaoid this and some times we cant.
But we should avoid “Honey pot” which mohan told as boxes kept at malls, and people come to saying this is lucky draw please fill your details, affcourse that you won in pounds mail. These are honey pots which can be avoided. But what about the information we shared with our organization,telecom comp,Banks which we cant avoid. I read in paper people does not want to enroll for “national Unique identification number” because of privacy problem. Sometimes i feel we are helpless.
Regards,
Praveen
Mohan says
I am paranoid about the UUID too Praveen… hope we don’t compromise on data security.
Swaram says
Sigh! I know! Taking assistance while filing IT returns is the one thing I do every yr! Thankfully, I never go in for 2!
Mohan says
It is so easy to file returns online with a little bit of patience. Try it out yourself next time 🙂
Elaya Kumar S says
Dear Mohan,
Thanks for the information. As mentioned in your blog, really we ourselves are the conduits through which the personal information gets passed to unsafe hands.
We have to be more careful in sharing our personal information in our day to day dealings and interactions across a variety of sources.
So, let us move to a state of conscious and careful sharing of personal information with others.
Mohan says
Absolutely, we got to be conscious about these simple things. I am wondering how it would be when the UUID is made available to all… somewhere still a paranoid about the data security.
S.R.Ayyangar says
It is really becoming a nu-sense as well as nightmare as at odd hours these people keep calling us despite being banged by many.Another headache is sms messages on mobile despite ‘do not disturb’ option. Just today I got a message for ‘body massage by female at your residence’ from an unknown sender!
Mohan says
Interesting offer on your mobile!!! It is. Even I have enrolled for DND a couple of years back and I still get irritating calls and sms’s once in a while.
Lakshmi Rajan says
Everyone’s life book is increasingly becoming an open source code.
Mohan says
Nice way of looking at it! Sadly things that are opening up should be in the right direction 🙂
Swaram says
Ha ha gud one!
Mohan says
🙂 LR is known for such out of box thoughts!
The Sorcerer says
Yeah, it does in a way. Its not just private data but also when people you don’t know having information “what have you done”, “whom were you with” and “how many relationships you had” even if you try to “keep things private”. In the internet, privacy is a rare and expensive commodity and once you have made your mark, its not as easy to remove your footprint from the internet.
Mohan says
And.. thanks to FB? 😛
Rindo says
@Mohan:
Yea. Facebook is now the ultimate stalker weapon.
Mohan says
🙂
The Sorcerer says
Full credit goes to them.
Mohan says
🙂 🙂
The Sorcerer says
If you think about it, when people buy a domain from a place where they don’t hide registration info, it gets displayed through WHOIS- address, phone number and the real name. Now this is more scarier.
People need to be self aware and keep an eye out.