Haryana man arrested for allegedly stealing, selling personal data of 66.9 crore people

The Cyberabad Police on Saturday said they arrested a person who was allegedly involved in stealing, holding and selling of personal and confidential data of 66.9 crore individuals and organisations belonging to 24 states and eight metropolitan cities.

A press release from the police said the accused, Vinay Bhardwaj, was found possessing data of students of Edu-tech organisations and also holds consumer/ customer data of major organisations like GST, Road transport organisations of various states, major e-commerce portals, social media platforms and fintech companies.

"The accused who was arrested on Friday was found selling personal and confidential data of about 66.9 crore individuals and organisations maintained in 104 categories," it said.

Some of the important data held by the accused includes the data of defence personnel, government employees, PAN card holders, data of 9th, 10th, 11 & 12th standard students, 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 among others, the release said.

The accused was operating through a website "InspireWebz" in Faridabad, Haryana and selling databases to clients through cloud drive links. The police seized two mobile phones and two laptops and data of 135 categories containing sensitive information of government, private organisations and individuals, it added.