NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom service provider, has refuted reports of a data breach compromising customer data.
In response to allegations that the personal details of over 37.5 crore Indian customers were for sale on a popular hacking forum, Airtel dismissed these claims as an unfounded attempt to damage its reputation.
“There has been a report alleging that Airtel customer data has been compromised. This is nothing short of a desperate attempt to tarnish Airtel’s reputation by vested interests. We have done a thorough investigation and can confirm that there has been no breach whatsoever from Airtel systems,” said the company in a press statement.
According to the claims, details including phone numbers, emails, addresses, and Aadhaar numbers of 375 million Airtel customers were supposedly available for sale on the dark web.
The report surfaced from Dark Web Informer, a source that monitors activities on the dark web. It highlighted that a hacker using the alias ‘xenZen’ was attempting to sell a database containing information of over 37.5 crore Airtel India customers for $50,000 (approximately Rs 41 lakh) in cryptocurrency.