ProxyEarth is showing the location, personal information of all Indians with just one phone number.
Imagine this: with just one phone number you can see everyone’s location, sometimes even live location in real time, with details like full name, address and father’s name. This is no joke as an evil website called ProxyEarth is allowing this.
If you’ve wondered how much tracking is possible with just a phone number, you no longer have to wonder: you can simply visit ProxyEarth, a rogue website named Rakesh. It is also an example of what is possible when someone penetrates telecommunications infrastructure, or when telecommunications infrastructure is left unsecured.
There is a website called ProxyEarth that is leaking location details, including possible live location, of phone users in India. All you have to do is enter the phone number on the website and the website reveals the details. Sometimes, using triangulated data from telecom towers, it also reveals the live location of the phone user. It is extremely precise and terrifying in its scope.
The website that was revealed a few days ago – we wrote about it here and here – is still live and accessible without any restrictions. Once on the website, all you have to do is enter a phone number and it fetches details like full name, father name, user address, alternate number, email ID and other details. The data is taken from the telecom records which we all have supplied to Airtel, Jio, Voda and others while purchasing SIM cards. In some cases this data is out of date. But for most users, it will be a huge shock to see their details publicly available like this.
India Today also spoke to the person who created the website. The person who created the website is named Rakesh and he is apparently a programmer and a video editor. He probably also runs some websites selling pirated content. He told India Today that he was not doing anything wrong by setting up ProxyEarth as he was only using data that was already publicly available on the internet due to various data leaks. About the inspiration behind creating such a website, Rakesh said: “I am using this website as a platform to attract traffic and advertise my other products.”
This data leak is serious
Although we have seen personal information of Indians leaked on the web time and again, the current incident seems particularly scary. This is because the kind of data that is available can easily be used to commit financial scams on a large scale. This is, of course, in addition to the complete loss of privacy that a person suffers when details like the father’s name and residential address are leaked on the web.
And what’s even more worrying is that the website has now been live in full public view for almost a week. It is still available on the web, and the man behind it – Rakesh – is still active on various web platforms, including social media.
