Confidential data of leading Russia MFO's are put up for sale online

Confidential information of clients of microfinance companies is put up for sale on the Internet. According to the seller, the package of documents includes data from more than 1.2 million clients from dozens of leading MFO in the Russian market.

To check the data set, the counterman provides a document with information of 800 people, where the full names, phone numbers, addresses, e-mails, as well as dates of birth and passport data are indicated. The RBC phoned around the majority of the participants from the trial file, many of them confirmed that over the past two years they had turned to the services of Bystrodengi, Zaimer, Mikroklad and Lime companies.

Anton Gruntov, director of security in the Eqvanta group of companies, confirmed that most of the information matches the database, but doesn’t always match the parameters. Zaimer’s internal security officers carried out an inspection, and as a result it turned out that there was no internal leak. Also, the management turned to law enforcement agencies for further investigation. Representatives of Microklad organization claim that there is no information about their clients in the trial version of the database.

Sources close to the regulator said that the given customer base looks like combined information from different bases, and doesn’t seem like a leak from one organization. Gruntov also said that webmasters or lead generators who collect databases for the purpose of further sale could be the source. Zaimer’s representatives suggest that the leak could have come from partner companies that collect loan applications on the Internet and sell them to microfinance organizations.