Data leak? Bengaluru Covid-19 patients flooded with ads

Some recently diagnosed Covid-19 patients are not only having to contend with the mental and physical problems of the infection but also a barrage of advertisements marketing everything from hospital beds to home sanitising services.

Anil K S, a tech entrepreneur who tested positive for Covid-19 on Sunday, June 27, said he started getting SMS ads from a pest control company offering to sanitise his home. Even when a subsequent retest showed that his initial result was a false positive report, the advertisements continued.

“This raises questions about the extent of the data which is being leaked,” he said. “Who is leaking our data? Were our Aadhaar details leaked?”

Others who tested positive for Covid told DH of getting advertisements from hospitals offering beds, insurance companies offering schemes and pharmacies advertising medicine. When DH called a pest control company identified by several complainants, a company representative claimed that the calls “are completely random and the firm has no connection to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP)”.

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However, this is something that a member of the BBMP War Room, speaking on condition of anonymity, disputes it. “There is definitely a data leak, either in the BBMP or from the many private vendors working with the BBMP on Covid-management,” the source said.

The source added that the problem had been noticed by the War Room during the first wave, before it tapered off from January. It subsequently resumed when the second wave began.

A Covid-19 patient support coordinator, who interacts with hundreds of home isolation cases daily, confirmed that there have been myriad complaints about targeted advertisements.

“When a person has Covid-19, their mindset is one of vulnerability. To hit them with this kind of marketing is insensitive,” the coordinator said, adding that he suspects the leak is originating from the BBMP War Room.

However, D Randeep, BBMP Special Commissioner (Health) said a series of security protocols revamped in the War Room since May have made data theft difficult. “All our staff log into the system using specific usernames. Their activity is tracked. It would be very difficult for someone to download patients’ details and for us to not know about it,” he said.

There is concern that the data leak could also be originating in test labs, telemedicine consultant firms and ambulance services.

An expert on data integrity and privacy, Pallavi Bedi, of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), concurred that several sources could be responsible for the data leaks. “The matter of data privacy and integrity is in flux. This is due to the fact that we do not have a data privacy law. Respect for health data is low,” she said.