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Indian BPOs face ID theft fire in UK SUDESHNA SEN, MONDAY, OCTOBER 09, 2006   LONDON: The Indian call centre industry is fast becoming the whipping boy of the British media and the entire anti-offshoring movement over recent reports of data thefts. A recent Channel 4 sting operation about data theft in Indian call centres is the latest in a series of highly-publicised incidents about how easy it is, ostensibly, to obtain personal financial data of Britons out of India.  From a country where a paper shredder is considered an essential household item, to ensure that bin raiders don’t get hold of your personal mail and steal your identity, this frenzy may, to any unsuspecting outsider, smack of a witch-hunt.  The ‘evidence’ as it were, which is being presented are conversations with middlemen making ‘offers’ to provide an unsuspecting tourist with British customers’ personal data, filmed on secret camera — the actual ‘samples’ provided number about 10, 12, and seven.  Just to put things in perspective, in ’05, HM Revenue & Customs had 13,000 staff identities of its civil servants stolen; the government staff identity theft attack touched employees in the department of works and public affairs as well. HMRC was forced to close down its online portal.  According to home office estimates, some 6,800 fraudulent tax credit claims, which cost the UK government 2.7m pounds were filed on the basis of this, and another 30,000 are being investigated. The final costs and effect of this theft is still to be estimated.  Last week, at the same time that the sting thing hit the UK media, Prefix IT, a leading PC security firm here published the results of research done by independent market research firm Tickbox.  It surveyed 1,000 UK employees in August and September ’06 — and found that 37% of men believed that it’s acceptable to take database information and sales leads (read customer data) from the office. 18% had actually done so, while 11% had removed confidential documents. 10% have taken a work database.  And 78% own devices like pen drives capable of stealing data. 60% of workers have removed items from the office in the past, though almost 50% do not believe that they are doing anything that is ‘wrong’.  Graeme Pitts Drake, CEO of Prefix, said that in an age when identity theft is the fastest growing crime, results of the Prefix security study have a particular resonance. Sadly, it didn’t seem to resonate with the British media, and virtually went unreported.