Post-HSBC fiasco, call centre staff live in abject fear

Are India’s call centre employees too terrified to talk? They are too frightened to reveal their identities, their private lives are being tracked, some by their employers and some, so it is feared, by British tabloids.

This week, Nadeem Kashmiri, an employee of HSBC’s BPO operations in Bangalore, was charged with accessing personal, security and debit card information of customers and siphoning off their money. “They knew about Nadeem Kashmiri for months. They tracked him and the customers were being informed about their transactions as the fraud was happening. But HSBC knew personal things about him, including facts about his brother and sister, who helped him. If we talk to you, they will track us down, please don’t call us,” pleaded a frightened employee in the Hyderabad office, who claims the buzz amongst employees at HSBC is that the operation was actually a sting by British tabloids, and that circulars and stern warnings have been issued by the company against speaking about their calls.

HSBC spokesperson George Cherian said the bank did not want to comment beyond a previous release that stated ‘Nadeem Kashmiri was suspended further to HSBC investigations’. Prakash Deshpande, an employee at IBM Daksh, however sees these as necessary precautions. “I have worked on projects where security measures seem like invasions of privacy, but that’s required,” he says. Akshay, another call centre employee, said a  call centre friend of his works had the hotmail account and “he would brag he knew my password. I find that frightening. We are warned not to talk about what we have access to.”

And what does one have access to in a call centre? Nehal Sanghvi, a former employee of E-serve, a financial call centre of Citicorp, explains: “When a customer calls from the USA, the screen flashes his 16 digit credit card number and all his personal details - from his social security number to his mother’s maiden name, to how many credit cards he has and even his last transaction and his credit limit. It is possible for someone to misuse credit cards, or open an account in the USA.”

But, he admits that given the risks, the employers are stringent on security. “There is security training for half-an-hour every week, where you are not even allowed to carry a pen inside. And surprise audits occur where your drawers are checked for evidence of papers.” Nehal, however, denies any personal tracking.

Ryan Pereira, who’s worked at Intelli and JP Morgan, says that while the southern paranoia has not spread to Mumbai, background checks are being stepped up. A senior manager at E-serve pooh-poohs any thought of personal surveillance. “British tabloids, being British, blow everything out of proportion. This is just paranoia.”