Data brokers are ready to sell sensitive personal information of millions of Indians to anyone who is willing to pay, no questions asked.
We don’t know P from Faridabad. But we do know she bought a red Hidesign handbag on Amazon for Rs 5,196 in cash. She did not apply any coupon for the purchase, getting only a 20% discount on the sticker price. In Hyderabad, C has an active Netflix Premium account and prefers it to Amazon Prime. And then there’s H from Aurangabad. His last order on Zomato was 200 grams of khatta dhokla from Sigdi Restaurant for Rs 242.
These three people (we’ve chosen to keep their identities under wraps) are among the thousands of others whose likes and dislikes …
Advait is a financial journalist and a former writer at The Morning Context. Here, he wrote on India’s banks, the wider financial services industry and the fintech ecosystem. He has previously worked with the Economic and Political Weekly, Business Standard, BloombergQuint and MediaNama, where he covered everything from the Reserve Bank of India to fintech policy.
Writer
advait@mailtmc.com
Mumbai
Ashwin covered fintech and banking at The Morning Context. Previously, he was at The Economic Times, where he worked across the finance, tech and startup verticals, breaking stories related to India’s banking system, startups in the new economy, digital payments, insurance and cryptocurrencies.
Writer
ashwin@mailtmc.com
Delhi