HYDERABAD: The police said that following Saturday’s arrest of a gang responsible for a data heist of information on 66.9 crore individuals, they found on Sunday that information of 16 crore individuals was found to be common among another data heist bust made in the past fortnight.
The police said they reached out to individuals from the common set and confirmed that they were found to be genuine.
According to the investigation, the police said accused Vinay Bhardwaj, held
on Saturday, stored the data in more than 70 cloud platforms.
He used to sell data and charged customers based on their needs, ranging
from ₹3,000 to ₹5,000 for data on 50,000 individuals. He was operational
since 2021, the police said.
Bhardwaj is a college dropout, who started designing websites after doing a
diploma course. But as the designing business was declining, he resorted to
data heist in Faridabad of Haryana, the police said.
While the police said he was operating on his own and was not linked to
previously arrested gangs, they are probing to ascertain the common ground
as their data was corresponding.
Officials also identified over 50 clients who bought the data and are in the
process of tracing them. “Once they are caught, we would get to know how
they are using the data and for what purposes,” an investigator said.
