Bhopal: The state cyber cell of Madhya Pradesh police arrested a 39-year-old man for allegedly selling confidential information of job seekers who submitted their resumes to job-websites to fake call centre operators doing cyber frauds. The accused, who used to work as a deputy manager in one of the country’s top job-websites Shine.com, was arrested from Noida after the cyber cell received a complaint from one of the victims in Bhopal, the police said.
According to the police, they had received a complaint from Rajat Sharma of Khajuri locality here. Sharma in his complaint told the police he was looking for job and had submitted his resume to Shine.com. After a few days, he got a call from another job-website firm named Glass-Door which later turned out to be fake and floated by the accused. The caller, who pretended to be a call centre staffer of the fake firm, promised him a job in the technical support department of Wipro. The victim agreed to take the job after which the caller asked him to deposit about Rs 32,500 in the name of registration, training and booking his seat in the company for the job. As asked, the victim deposited the amount in their bank amount after which they stopped picking his calls.
“Sharma then understood he had been duped after which he lodged in complaint in the cyber police station. The police based on the complaint, registered a case under relevant sections of IPC and IT Act. During investigations it tracked down the caller from the fake job-website company and nabbed him from Noida. During the interrogations he told the police that he had received the personal and confidential information of the job-seekers from main accused and deputy manager in Shine.com, 39-year-old Ajay Sharma,” said SP, state cyber cell, Shailendra Singh Chauhan.
“The police nabbed Ajay and questioned him thoroughly. He confessed before the police that while being in Shine.com he had access to the thousands of resumes and personal information of job seekers. He then registered a fake company in the name of Glass-Door and sold the data to the fake call centres operating in Delhi and Noida. He sold the data at Rs 10,000 to the call centre operator who then under the name of Glass-Door used to call the job seekers and dupe them,” said Chauhan adding accused Sharma had been booked under relevant sections of IPC and IT Act and investigations were on in the case.
‘Cyber criminals targeting insts’
The cyber criminals commiting cyber fraud like the fake job-websites one, are now increasingly dependent on human sources to get access to the confidential information of the people.
“Earlier they could access such data by hacking the database of any organisation or institution but now it is very difficult because of more advanced database protection softwares being implemented,” said a city based cyber security expert, Hemraj Singh Chauhan while speaking to Free Press. He further told that because the cyber criminals are finding it difficult to get virtual access to the database, they are now buying the confidential data comprising personal information like e-mail id, phone number, resume and others from the sources only.
“The cyber criminals are increasingly targeting public institutions like colleges and universities for data. The reason behind this is the availability of the large number of students studying there. In one shot they could get access to the information of thousands of people to be later used for cyber fraud and marketing activities. It is very easy to leak such data from colleges and universities,” said Chauhan. Superintendent of police, state cyber cell, Shailendra Singh Chauhan while speaking in the issue said that they would definitely take action if any such complaint comes to them. “The police cannot act on suo-moto basis. If any complaint regarding data leak from colleges or universities comes, then necessary action would be taken against the accused in the investigations,” said Shailendra.
