Wednesday, May 03, 2017

BSNL online recharge

I used to recharge / pay BSNL bills via portal.bsnl.in . Recently something got into my attention. After a successful recharge, I always note the transaction-id etc for future references.

It came to my notice that a popup window was opening to another website freebeemart.com with your phone numbers being passed as a get request.

The exact url is as :  freebeemart.com/?Ph_no=9400XXXXXX .

I haven't even clicked any of the offers it mentioned, but without my concern BSNL website gives my number to a 3rd party service. I have already activated DND and BSNL is selling my mobile number to a 3rd party service.

I send my grievance at pgportal.gov.in .


I informed @CMDBSNL regarding the same.

Thank you Anupam Shrivastava for notifying @BSNLCorporate.


And I got a reply from BSNL_Kerala


If you are not a web developer you may probably don't know what an http GET request is. It is ok, ask someone who is good in it and learn what they get when you pass someone else mobile number.

Sites likes this is actually storing the information to their database.

The screenshot below shows an error when you pass a string to freebeemart as : freebeemart.com/?Ph_no=9400XXXXXX .



And now just laugh and read it is BSNL's policy to send mobile numbers to 3rd party services.

I also wonder when will BSNL employees understand they cannot sell someone else mobile number like this.

So this is currently what I added to /etc/hosts .


No comments: