From Netflix to BYJU's: India's 'biggest' data theft busted in Cyberabad, details of 66.9 crore people compromised

Hyderabad: Cyberabad Police have cracked yet another biggest data theft case in the country by arresting kingpin Vinay Bhardwaj from Haryana.

Eight days back, the Cyberabad police busted a 16 crore data-heist in Nodia.

In this case, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) took up the money laundering probe based on the FIR registered by Cyberabad police following the confidential date of 16.8 crore citizens was stolen.

However in the latest case, the personal and confidential information of 66.9 crore confidential data of individuals and organizations across 24 states and metro cities was stolen for sale on cloud.

This time, the gang was operating from Faridabad, Haryana.

The Cyberabad police in a release on Saturday, said the accused Vinay Bhardwaj established an office in Faridabad, Haryana and collected databases from Amer Sohail and Madan Gopal. He used to promote social media platforms to resell the data to fraudsters for profits.

The accused was found possessing data of students of Byjus & Vedantu organisations. Also, he possessed the data of 1.84 lakh cab users of eight metro cities and data of 4.5 lakh salaried employees of six cities and Gujarat state.

Further, the accused holds consumer/customer data of major organisations like GST (Pan India), RTO (Pan India), Amazon, Netflix, Youtube, Paytm, Phonepe, Big Basket, BookMyShow, Instagram, Zomato, Policybazaar and Upstox.

The accused person is found selling personal and confidential data of about 66.9 crore individuals and organisations maintained in 104 categories. This includes 51.9 crores of data of individuals and organisations of 24 states and 8 cities maintained in 44 categories.

According to Cyberabad Police Commissioner M Stephen Raveendra, some of the important data held by the accused include the data of defence personnel; government employees; PAN card holders; students data of 9th, 10th, 11 & 12th standard; senior citizens; Delhi electricity consumers; D-MAT account holders; mobile numbers of various individuals; NEET students; High Net worth Individuals; insurance holders; credit card and debit card holders etc.

In this case, the accused person was operating through a website “InspireWebz” in Faridabad, Haryana and selling databases to the clients through cloud drive links, he said.

Some of the important categories are data of Banks, Insurance & Financial Services, Doctors, Software Engineers, True-caller & Telecom Data, Trading & Stockbroking, Consulting services of crores of individuals etc including the personal and confidential data of Defence, Government employees, PAN card holders, High Networth Individuals, D-MAT account holders, students database, Financial data(Credit card, Debit Card, Loans and Insurance) was found available with these accused.

Data of NEET students with their names, father name, mobile number & their residences are also found with these accused. PAN Card database containing sensitive information on income, email ids, phone numbers, addresses was also found.

Data of Government employees containing information on their name, mobile number, category, date of birth etc was also found.

The database of the car owners of vehicles, Job Aspirants data, Real Estate, Construction, Manufacturing & Industrial, Frequent Flyer Travel details, NRI Database, was also identified with them, the release said.

The Police have seized from his possession two mobile phones, two laptops and Data of 135 categories containing sensitive information of government, private organisations and individuals. (UNI)