New Delhi, India

One of India’s most-popular wearables brands ‘boAt’ has reportedly suffered a massive data breach. According to a report by Forbes India, data of boAt's 7.5 million customers is available for sale on the dark web after a major leak. The personal details of its customers, like names, addresses, contact numbers, email IDs, and customer IDs are up for sale, which can be utilised by hackers and cybercriminals.

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The dark web is a corner of the internet where web forums and communities share illegal, stolen data for illicit purposes.

The Forbes report cites a hacker named ShopifyGUY, who claims to have shared the data on the dark web.

boAt, led by its tech-savvy founder Aman Gupta, is a leading seller of smartwatches, headphones, and true wireless earbuds in India. With a mammoth market share of 26 per cent, the company claims to be the number one wearables brand. In the TWS (true wireless) category, boAt boasts a market share of 34 per cent.

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boAt also sells smartwatches, which has raised concerns that data related to the health of its customers might also have been leaked.

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As India becomes more digitalised, reports of massive data breaches have also become common over the last two years. A US-based cybersecurity firm Resecurity last year claimed that personal identifiable information of about 815 million Indians was leaked on the dark web from the “Indian Citizen Aadhaar & Passport" records.

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This led India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate the alleged breach that was discovered by hacker “pwn0001."

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The leaked data allegedly included: Name, Father's name, Phone number, Other number, Passport number, Aadhaar number, Age.

Now, the reported data breach at boAt has again highlighted the need to better regulate tech companies and their use of customers’ data in India.

boAt has so far not commented on the data breach reports.

(With inputs from agencies)