Cyberabad Police recently busted a data theft ring that allegedly had data on 669 million user accounts from 24 states and eight metropolitan cities.
The Cyberabad police claimed that the gang recovered data from several Indian tech startups, including BYJU’S, Vedantu, Paytm, PhonePe, Zomato, PolicyBazaar, CRED, BigBasket, and Upstox.
“The accused was discovered to have data from a variety of sources, including BYJU’s, Vedantu, cab users, GST, RTO, Amazon, Netflix, Paytm, PhonePe, and others,” Cyberabad Police said in a tweet on April 1. (Saturday). “The accused was selling the database to clients through a website called ‘InspireWebz’ based in Faridabad, Haryana,” the police added.
According to the police, the accused allegedly possessed sensitive information from government organisations, private organisations, and individuals. During the arrest, police seized two mobile phones, two laptops, and data from dozens of hard drives and solid-state drives.
According to the police, the recovered data also included user accounts from Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Banking and financial information related to credit and debit cards, demat accounts, and PAN cards were also included in the recovered data.
The news comes just ten days after the Cyberabad Cyber Crime Wing arrested a group of ten cyber criminals for allegedly stealing confidential bank data and duping credit card users.
This is not the first time that Indian startups have had their users’ data compromised by bad actors. Inc42 reported data leaks at Yes Madam, Slick, and RailYaari earlier this year.
While the government is working on the data protection bill, India is one of the worst-impacted countries in the world in terms of cyberattacks.
