Hacks, leaks, spam and band-aid solutions

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Editor's note: Over the last month, I have noticed an uptick in telemarketing calls to sell me credit cards, home loans, auto loans, personal loans and brokerage accounts.  I am not alone, surely.  Over the last two weeks, the number of tweets and social media posts over spam calls from banks and financial companies have increased manifold. User complaints range from late night calls, use of private numbers and pre-recorded messages to the ineffectiveness of the do-not-disturb feature provided by the telecom regulator and telcos.  A perusal of Google Trends reveals that searches for “bank spam” over the last five years have pretty much been stable whereas the number of searches for “spam calls” have increased significantly in the last eight months. Source: Google Trends Save for the need to meet sales targets, the rise in spam calls can largely be correlated to two developments. On the one hand, there is a huge market for databases available on the internet. Interested buyers do not need to connect to the dark web and use cryptocurrencies; they can just use Google and a UPI …