Big Brother is alive and well in India's call centres
New Delhi (AsiaNews/Agencies) Indian call centres have adopted security measures worthy of Orwell's Big Brother to keep their Western customers happy. India has one of the leading outsourcing and call centre industries. It is worth US$ 5.7 billion and is growing at a rate of 40 per cent a year. However, it is under the cloud of security breach and fraud.
Citibank Customers in the United States earlier this year noticed something was amiss when funds went missing from their accounts. The missing money totalled US0,000.
Citibank traced the transactions back to its Indian call centre, MphasiS, in Pune, Maharashtra.
In April, police arrested three employees at MphasiS, where 6,000 Indians process credit-card statements for US banks. They were charged with online credit-card fraud. During telephone conversations, the suspects coaxed the Citibank customers into disclosing their personal identification numbers.
It was an unmitigated public relations disaster for India's outsourcing industry, already flayed by Western critics who claimed data was particularly unsafe in India.
Another blow hit the industry in June. A British tabloid said one of its reporter had bought from the bank details about 1,000 Britons for just US$ 15 each from a worker at a New Delhi call centre run.
The clients involved top British banks such as HSBC, Barclays and Lloyds TSB. The newspaper said the worker had claimed he could provide 200,000 account details a month.
In India call centres employ some 350,000 people compared to 42,000 four years ago; they provide an important service to foreign companies at a fraction of the cost.
The industry has responded to these incidents by imposing draconian security measures at call centres. Analysts estimate that outsourcing companies have increased their spending on sophisticated surveillance equipment by 20 per cent in the past six months.
In some call centres, employees are frisked when they arrive and their bags are checked for cellphones, pens, and notebooks.
Workstations have been placed under the camera surveillance whilst recorders tape conversations. How often and for how long, employees leave their cubicle is noted.
Most call centres now deny workers access to the internet and e-mail. Access to certain office areas requires a special card and password. No paper is allowed to prevent workers jotting down details.
At ICICI OneSource in Mumbai, where workers process credit-card bills and make telemarketing calls for top US and European banks, insurers and retailers, computer terminals lack floppy disk and CD-Rom drives to prevent employees copying or storing data.
At other companies like Hero ITES, all new employees' backgrounds are verified.
All this has led employees to complain that their work places resemble top security prisons.
Last June Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for "changes in existing laws, if found necessary, to ensure that any breach of secrecy, any illegal transfer of commercial or other privileged information and any other form of cyber crime is made a punishable offence". (PB)
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