What is 'India's Dark Data Economy' where spy apps that monitor others and student exam results are bought and sold?
India, with a population of more than 1.3 billion, has made remarkable progress as an IT powerhouse in recent years, while online privacy regulations are very loose, and spy apps that monitor spouses and a wide variety of personal information are bought and sold. I am. The
Inside India's booming dark data economy – Rest of World
https://restofworld.org/2020/all-the-data-fit-to-sell/
A woman named Ayushi Sahu, who lives in India, will divorce her husband in 2018. It was said that the trigger was data such as private calls, SMS, WhatsApp messages, photos, videos that my husband monitored and recorded on Mr. Sahu's smartphone. The husband went to Mr. Sahu's parents' house and played the recorded message in front of his parents, accusing Mr. Safu of complaining about his mother-in-law and talking to his boyfriend.
Mr. Sahu did not know when he was being monitored, but since the smartphone he owns was a gift from his husband, it is possible that spyware was installed in the smartphone from the beginning. In India, it is not uncommon for jealous people to set up spy apps on their spouse's smartphone to monitor their behavior.
Kunwar Vikram Singh, chairman of the Indian Private Detective and Investigators Association, told the Rest of World that it is common for wealthy families to hire private detectives to assess their spouse's aptitude, especially in urban elites. Answered. Singh estimates that private detective services across India have a market size of $ 1.2 billion and often use spyware for smartphones to track specific individuals. Stated.
The growing demand for spyware in India was said to have occurred in the early 2010s. Gujarat software engineer Tushar Mepani met a parent who wanted to 'monitor their child's whereabouts' during a virus and cybersecurity investigation. It seems that these parents were very rich, and Mepani, who sniffed out business opportunities, developed EasySpyPhone, an app that tracks children.
In addition to collecting location data, EasySpyPhone was able to record calls and monitor text messages. Recent apps derived from this have added more features, allowing you to monitor social media such as Facebook and WhatsApp, and even secretly turn on the phone's microphone to record conversations. .. The cost is $ 20 to $ 40 per month, which is popular with parents, says Mepani.
However, it seems that Mepani released one or two spyware himself, and the main revenue is obtained by licensing the monitoring application to multiple vendors. Each vendor sells spyware in different packages under this license. Karnam Choudhary, a private detective, is one of them, saying that he has created a unique app called Spy Mobile Process to provide to customers who want a behavioral investigation.
In India, privacy laws that regulate tracking via smartphones are ambiguous, and the sale and purchase of spyware developed for the purpose of monitoring someone is not regulated. In addition, the spyware vendor stated in the terms that 'appropriate written consent by the smartphone owner' is required for installation, and added a disclaimer that the user is responsible for using spyware.
Since August 2020, Google has updated its ' Policies on Products and Services That Promote Fraud ' to ban ads on surveillance technologies such as spyware. On the other hand, 'private research services' and 'services for parents to track and monitor minor children' are not regulated, and vendors sell spyware by claiming products for children. I'm continuing. 'Spyware is like a knife,' Mepani said, noting that it can be used not only for legitimate acts such as cutting fruit, but also for some uses.
Privacy issues in India exist not only in the spread of spyware, but also in the data trading market where various personal information is bought and sold. In India, where more than 500 million people use the Internet every month, a large amount of personal information is constantly collected, and there is an online black market where customers can purchase various data. The datasets on sale are diverse, and there are databases belonging to all groups, such as parents with children, cable TV customers, pregnant women, habitual pizza eaters, and investment trust users. is.
A typical database is sold in the form of a spreadsheet with your name and various personal information, and may tell you your age and place of residence, as well as the type of car you own, your family structure, and where your child goes to school. Since the database is updated regularly, old data is cheaper, and there seems to be a sales format such as discounting if you purchase multiple at the same time. The Rest of World says potential customers can simply search for ads on social media or combine industry keywords with words like 'data' and 'database' to reach the vendors who sell the data.
According to privacy experts, personal information has been bought and sold as data in India since at least around 2006, and data brokers are collecting various information from the Internet. Himanshu Bhatt, a former data broker, pointed out that there were cases where the ID card of
Also, in India, companies sometimes sell personal information collected in business, and it seems that companies can often sell personal information entered for coupon acquisition and movie refunds without the consent of the individual. Rest of World said, 'Neighborhood mobile phone shops can sell demographics to parties conducting regional campaigns, and financial technology companies transfer personal information collected through astronomical apps to their servers for credit card cards. You can measure credit. If someone fills in LinkedIn with employment history or shares contacts in a public directory, the broker can use the software to extract the data. '
When Rest of World actually contacted the database distributor and requested a 'database sample', he said that he received a list of thousands of people just by giving him his email address and phone number. In addition to your name, email address, phone number, and address, you can purchase items such as 'cotton pajamas ($ 27 / about 2800 yen)' and 'noise canceling headphones ($ 408 / about 42,000 yen)' at online shops. It also wrote about the goods and prices that were made. The entire data set contains data for about 14 million people, and the purchase cost is only $ 20 (about 2100 yen).
The use of the database is up to the purchaser, but fraud is the main way to make money from this data. It seems that the value of the database fluctuates depending on whether the dataset is wealthy or not and the season, and the most valuable is the 'student database'.
The war for entrance exams to top universities is intensifying in India, and by the end of high school students are studying hard for tests such as the
A scammer who has obtained a database of students and parents will ask a prominent parent to 'guarantee backdoor admission to a medical college or engineering department' and commit a backdoor admission scam that receives money and disappears. Of course, the story of backdoor admission is left to the discretion, but it seems that parents who have focused on their children's education are often inadvertently deceived and pay a lot of money. When the backdoor admission scam was widely reported in India in 2018, the website selling the student database was closed, but the following year it was renamed and a similar website appeared again.
In India, the issue of data privacy is rarely discussed, police are also focusing on fraudulent groups that actually commit fraud, and data brokers are almost ignored. In the opinion of the authorities, the fraudulent group is clearly committing the crime, but the broker simply traded the Excel sheet, and many victims are also difficult to prosecute because they do not know the exact source of the data leak. That's right.
In recent years, data brokers have been gradually pulled out to court, and in 2017, telecommunications company Reliance Jio filed a complaint of customer data theft, and in 2018, 800,000 people were leaked from the Education Bureau. Owners of three data sales companies have been arrested for selling minutes of student data.
In 2019, the Parliament of India announced a personal data protection bill designed with reference to the EU General Data Protection Regulation . The bill will allow companies to disclose why they collect personal information about users and potential risks, allowing users to manage their privacy. But privacy activists have expressed concern as the bill exempts 'government agencies' from regulation.
Still, lawyer and policy researcher Smriti Parsheera said the new bill would advance data privacy efforts in India. Rest of World argues that 'careful use of technology may be the easiest way to protect personal privacy,' Sahu became cautious after learning about her husband's surveillance and set screen locks. He said he came to do it.
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