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An Indian buddy of mine mentioned that outsourcing of calls to India has been slowing way, way down because the security is way too shoddy, and it's too easy to eavesdrop on calls and get personal information.
There was in fact a major scandal a couple months ago, when a call center operator in India was actually selling the personal information of British clients out to the highest bidder, information that was in turn used for widespread fraud and identity theft. This particular call center worker was obviously in the minority in comparison to his colleagues who just do their job and maintain confidentiality, but he did do some serious damage. When the story his the British press, the British population was so enraged that most British companies have halted their overseas call center operations significantly, many pulled out altogether, for fear of being sued.
Sadly, we in the US appear to be equally if not more vulnerable to this, and our government and press far more acquiescent in allowing valuable customer information to be disseminated by overseas call centers, since the relative lack of security in many centers in India and Pakistan is, after all, one of the factors that makes those places much cheaper. If more centers in Bangalore were to demand tighter security, that would increase the cost of the call centers and, of course, cut into the profit margins of US companies. Even though the Indian centers themselves are perfectly happy to do this, there's far too much pressure from American execs to not institute such security measures, since they'd then be denied their latest $100 million bonus due to the higher security. Members of the MSM, of course, also save money in this regard so they're in no hurry to report on it. It should be a major scandal, but we don't hear much about it.
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