A sting operation by Britain's Channel 4 on alleged sale of customers' personal data by Indian call centre workers is the latest round of negative publicity for the outsourcing industry, but its business is still thriving.
The TV channel aired a documentary recently which showed how data of thousands of British customers could be stolen and sold by unscrupulous call centre employees for as little as $15.
Still, "the Indian outsourcing industry is doing very well in Britain and there is no hostility against it," Lord Swraj Paul, British Ambassador for Overseas Business, said at the Nehru Centre in London on Friday night as he released a new novel from India based on outsourcing.
"In Britain, we are very happy about Indian call centres. They have benefited British companies very much," he said.
Indian journalist-author Neelesh Misra's 'Once Upon a Timezone', a romantic comedy, is set in New York and an Indian call centre. It was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where India was the guest of honour this year and the theme was "Today's India".
British author Mark Kobayashi-Hillary, speaking at the book release said "off-shoring personal data to India is a time-bomb waiting to explode" but added "The India-bashing must stop."
"India is far ahead of us in planning how to operate a service industry with hundreds of thousands of employees accessing personal data on customers," Kobayashi-Hillary said. "We should start listening to their security ideas before the next major data breach takes place on these shores."

Channel 4 rejected requests from the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), a leading Indian software industry body, to provide details of the alleged wrongdoers so that they could be prosecuted.
"It is not the role of broadcasters or journalists to act as agents of the police or any other authority," the channel said. British regulators have in the past scrutinised and cleared safety standards in the Indian outsourcing industry.
Britain's Financial Service Authority carried out a probe into standards in India in April 2005 and the Banking Code Standards Board audited eight Indian call centres this year, handling more than a million calls per month from the United Kingdom.
The BCSB report said; "Customer data is subject to the same level of security as in the UK. High risk and more complex processes are subject to higher levels of scrutiny than similar activities onshore."
Earlier, NASSCOM expressed doubts about the veracity of 'the Data Theft Scandal' report to be aired by Channel 4 and urged the TV outfit to fully cooperate with authorities to find out the "corrupt staff" associated with Indian call centres.
In a statement, NASSCOM said it had written to the channel saying that their immediate cooperation was vital.
The programme 'The Data Theft Scandal' is part of Channel 4's investigative series Dispatches which was shown in the UK.
The new investigation claimed that details of credit cards, driving licences and passports were stolen from call centres and sold to the highest bidder.
'NASSCOM had been in correspondence with Channel 4/Dispatches in connection with the broadcast and had requested details of the allegations which Dispatches intends to make together with the evidence/support documentation that they have. Dispatches have refused to provide that information,' the statement said.

Channel 4 is understood to have spent over a year trying to locate security lapses in India's call centre industry.
Commenting on the situation, NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik said: "While there are a lot of unanswered questions, we take any allegation of a breach in our security extremely seriously.
"It is vital that Dispatches cooperates immediately so that the perpetrators of any breach can be brought to justice and that lessons can be learnt. NASSCOM will reach out to the Indian police to investigate the claims made in the programme," he said.
"We are concerned about the veracity of such stories, especially sting operations, where monetary inducements were provided. These operations increasingly go beyond uncovering wrong-doing and actually induce criminal activity that is then recorded and aired.
"Such 'stories' go to prove the lengths to which some vested interests will go to threaten this global industry with its reputation for customer value and security. This situation is particularly grave, since one of the alleged criminals has stated that the data he offered for sale was fake," he added.
Karnik said, "Security is the number one priority. India has established an excellent international reputation and under no circumstances, will we allow this to be compromised.