With one arrest, the Cyberabad Police have busted one of the largest thefts of personal and confidential data of nearly 67 crore individuals and organisations across 24 states and eight metropolitan cities.
The arrested accused is charged with stealing and holding the personal data of 66.9 crore people as well as organisations before selling the data through a website.
Vinay Bharadwaj was found to be in possession of data from various sources, including BYJUS, Vedantu, cab users, GST, RTO, Amazon, Netflix, PayTM, PhonePe, Big Basket, Book My Show, Zomato etc. He apparently had 18 lakh data of students of BYJUS and Vedantu, 1.84 lakh cab users and 4.5 lakh salaried employees from six cities and Gujarat.
Bharadwaj was found holding data from 135 categories containing sensitive information of government, private organisations and individuals. Some of the important data in his possession included those belonging to defence personnel, government employees, PAN card holders, data of students between classes of 9-12 standard, NEET aspirants, senior citizens, consumers of Delhi Electricity Board, D- MAT account holders, debit and credit card holders, insurance holders and so on.
The accused was operating through a website called ‘InspireWebz’ based at Faridabad in Haryana and was selling the database to clients through cloud drive links. The police seized two mobile phones, two laptops and the data during the arrest.
Barely a week ago, the Cyberabad Police had arrested seven persons, who were illegally trading with the data of around 16 crore people after obtaining them through illegal means. The data obtained through such means are used for fraud and conning people.