Data Theft: Cyberabad Police Says User Data Of BYJU’S, Zomato, Paytm Recovered From Gang

Telangana’s Cyberabad Police recently busted a data theft gang which was allegedly in possession of data related to 669 Mn user accounts from 24 states and eight metropolitan cities.

The Cyberabad police claimed that data of several Indian tech startups, including BYJU’S, Vedantu, Paytm, PhonePe, Zomato, PolicyBazaar, CRED, BigBasket and Upstox, was recovered from the gang.

“The accused has been found to possess data from various sources, including BYJU’S, Vedantu, cab users, GST, RTO, Amazon, Netflix, Paytm, PhonePe etc.,” Cyberabad Police said in a tweet on April 1 (Saturday). “The accused was operating through a website called ‘InspireWebz’ based in Faridabad, Haryana, and was selling the database to clients,” the police added.

The accused, according to the police, allegedly had sensitive information of government organisations, private organisations, and individuals. The police seized two mobile phones, two laptops and data in dozens of hard drives and solid-state drives during the arrest.

The recovered data also included user accounts from Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, according to the police. The recovered data also contained banking and financial information related to credit and debit cards, demat accounts and PAN cards.

Inc42’s queries on the issue to the startups named by the police remained unanswered till the time of publishing this article.

The development comes about 10 days after another data theft case when Cyberabad Cyber Crime Wing arrested a group of 10 cyber criminals for allegedly stealing confidential bank data and duping credit card users.

This is not the first time when Indian startups have seen the data of their users compromised due to bad actors. Earlier this year, Inc42 reported data leaks at Yes Madam, Slick and RailYaari.

While the government is working on the data protection bill, India is one of the worst-impacted countries in the world in terms of cyberattacks.

While the government said that CERT-In tracked just 13.91 Lakh cybersecurity incidents in 2022, a senior Google executive last August pegged the number at 18 Mn cyberattacks a day, which translates to 6.57 Bn cyberattacks per year.

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