Credit card info found on bhelpuri wrapper

MUMBAI: On Tuesday evening, Aneesh, a media professional in his thirties, bought a packet of bhelpuri from the roadside vendor in MIDC, Andheri. While munching on the snack, he happened to glance at the paper cone in which the vendor had mixed the bhel. His curiosity was piqued. It was a computer printout of an invoice for a car rental. Once he had eaten up his bhel, he studied it carefully: it had the name of a credit card holder, the 16-digit credit card number, the three-digit batch number (from the back of the card) and the expiry date.In short, all the ammo needed for online transactions.
It was an American Express card. The request had gone on email from tech firm Intel to Avis, an international car rental firm with offices in India. It was sent in March last year for an Intel guest who was staying at the Grand Hyatt and needed to hire a car for a day. Despite the invoice being more than a year old, the expiry date (Feb 2008) showed that the card was still valid. To heighten the risk, it was a company credit card, which automatically scales up the chances of misuse — not only is the credit limit higher even the authenticity of the spends are tougher to track.
So how did such sensitive information find its way to the bhelwalla? While the paper trail is hard to trace to source, an important stop must certainly have been the raddiwalla. An Intel spokesperson said, "It is an unfortunate incident and Intel is deeply concerned. We hold our employee confidentiality in the highest respect. We are currently investigating the matter."
Those in the credit card business warn that this is not an isolated case. Security norms for digital transactions are still very lax in India, and the use of shredders for documents is almost non-existent.
The bhel-puri credit card story, however, had a safe ending. The person eating bhel didn't head for the nearest cyber cafe. He carefully ironed out the paper cone and passed it on to a writer friend, who called TOI.