Beware! Not just COVID virus , face telecaller barrage too

NT EXPOSE

Kumaran P | NT

Bengaluru: A growing number of patients who have tested positive for Covid-19 are outraged after being at the receiving end of a barrage of calls from tele-callers and private vendors, who are inundating patients and their caregivers with offers of various services. Chief among them - ‘home sanitisation’ services.

Shocked patients have told News Trail that not only are they having to cope with the debilitating effects of the virus, they are mystified over how sanitisation vendors know who has tested Covid-19 positive, when this information is classified and is only available to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) health officials.

A resident of Frazer Town said, “My entire family tested COVID-19 positive and are taking treatment at home. We are getting at least four calls every day asking if we need home sanitisation services. We asked them why they think we needed it, and how do they know anything about us. They said that they have got our contact numbers and only two days ago, and we are absolutely mystified on how they could have access to our numbers. Moreover, how do they even know that we have tested positive? For sure, this information from BBMP is being sold to them. I have given these callers an earful and am disconnecting all their calls,” he added.

Interestingly, such incidents have been happening from the time, that the first wave of COVID-19 hit the city. It was brought to the notice of the higher-ups in the State government of Karnataka several times, but they have simply dismissed the allegations, insiders said.

It doesn’t end there. Residents also allege that their private telephone numbers have been shared with companies that are sending them messages advertising their products. It has also been given to insurance companies, who are using it to woo them with offers soon after they undergo a COVID-19 test.

Some residents are even worried about their data being circulated among the residents’ groups in apartment complexes. The reason being, a group or a committee collects the details of all residents who have undergone COVID-19 testing and maintains it in an Excel sheet to track the building residents. Suman R, a member from the association of an apartment in Koramangala said, “A committee is maintaining the data of people who have already been tested and the data also consists of people who are in quarantine and when they are completing their isolation period. This is basically to track the status inside the apartment.”

“Recently, this entire Excel sheet was circulated in the WhatsApp group where anyone can get access to all phone numbers and other details in the entire apartment complex. Who knows what people will do with this data? Some of the residents might forward that sheet to strangers, or someone working with data might use this for any purpose of their own. There is no control over this system,” he added.

Residents said that the danger of such personal information being leaked could happen from within the apartment complex group. Suman said, “The source of the leak could be one of the apartment members. We can never identify that.”

BBMP culprit?

There are many who allege that the BBMP itself could be sharing the data. Malik John who lives in an apartment complex said, “In our apartment BBMP conducted COVID-19 testing and since then most of us are receiving calls from credit card, loan, insurance agencies along with multiple advertisements on their mobile phone. It seems like the data has gone from there to these companies.” News Trail brought this to the notice of D Randeep, commissioner for health and family welfare department and Gaurav Gupta, chief commissioner of BBMP who said that they will look into it and assured that the data is absolutely secure.